Nike has notified some employees that it plans to fire them on Saturday because they haven’t met the company’s deadline to verify their vaccination against COVID-19 and haven’t received an exemption for religious or medical reasons.

Columbia Sportswear says it plans to take similar measures and will begin firing unvaccinated employees Feb. 1.

Legal challenges, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision Thursday halting a COVID-19 vaccine rule for targeting large businesses, have derailed most broad government vaccine mandates. Legal scholars, though, generally agree that private employers are free to adopt vaccine mandates regardless of how the courts rule. And that’s what Nike and Columbia Sportswear are doing, moving to dismiss employees who haven’t demonstrated they are in compliance.

“You failed to complete the verification process and our records show that you do not have an approved (exemption),” reads an email Nike sent to one employee last week. “As a result, you are not in compliance with the Policy and your employment is scheduled to be terminated on Saturday, January 15, 2022.”

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Employees say a group of 120 Nike employees objecting to the vaccine mandate have been communicating online, but it’s not clear how many of them are actually unvaccinated or how many face firing. Some report that Nike has been granting at least a few last-minute...

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