A college instructor who taught for nearly 30 years was fired due to the strict COVID protocols in Minnesota—just weeks before they were rescinded.
Russ Stewart was an instructor at Lake Superior College in Duluth where he taught ethics, logic and philosophy. The school is part of the Minnesota State System of Colleges and Universities and, as such, Stewart was a state employee.
In the summer of 2021, Gov. Tim Walz imposed a mandatory COVID vaccination and testing program for all state employees. It was a mandate that ruined Stewart’s career.
“I was quite surprised by it … things were really getting better and things were seemingly returning somewhat to normal. I was going to be allowed to be in the classroom in September, face to face for the first time in about a year. So, I was really surprised that he issued this policy mandating the vaccine or testing,” Stewart said.
A questionable mandate with questionable timing
Like many others, Stewart questioned the mandate. “The problem fundamentally was I didn’t think that the governor had the legal authority to issue the mandate. The state of emergency that Minnesota had been under for a year or two was lifted before he issued the mandate. So he couldn’t claim that he was making it under emergency powers. He didn’t have constitutional authority to do it and no legislative authority was ever granted either. So it’s just an ad hoc policy that he made up, apparently thinking it was a good idea,” Stewart added.
Stewart also had a bigger concern with the mandate: people who were taking the injection were still catching COVID.
“There was no medical reason to have the policy in place. And it was a violation of my autonomy, my medical autonomy and my privacy to be required to undergo this testing. I mean, the governor can’t just waltz in there and say, you know, everybody has to take a pregnancy test once a week or once a month, or everybody has to take a drug test. Nobody would have ever stood for that. And yet he can, he can say, well, everybody has to take a COVID test if you haven’t taken the injection. Well, that’s a violation of my medical autonomy,” Stewart explained.
The fact that Stewart’s multiple exemptions were denied is perhaps the most telling part of his ordeal.
“Their rebuttal was simply to say, no, you have to comply with the policy,” he said.
Stewart planned to continue teaching and retire at 65. However, at the age of 57, he was terminated—just six weeks before the Walz administration quietly rescinded the mandatory COVID vaccination policy.
Stewart also questioned the timing of it all—and possible political motivations. “I was fired in March of 2022, things were really returning to normal. COVID numbers were dropping, hospitalizations were dropping, everything was improving, people were becoming more optimistic. I thought maybe the college administration would just let things float for a few more weeks until summer came and then maybe by the fall of ‘22, I could return and everything would be normal. But they didn’t do that, they fired me. Only a few weeks later, the policy was rescinded. So it really does make me wonder what all of the motives were that were at play.”
Governor Walz: ‘A petty tyrant’
Liz Collin asked what Stewart’s message to voters would be about Governor Tim Walz, now running as a vice presidential candidate.
“They should remember that Tim Walz is a petty tyrant, that he is not a man of reason, that he’s vindictive and that he is a consummate party bureaucrat. He actually reminds me of some kind of Soviet-era, Eastern bloc petty tyrant, like, you know, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but he ran Romania back here during the ’70s and ’80s and became the dictator of Romania, not because of his excellence, but because of his mediocrity. That’s what I think of when I think of Tim Walz, a mediocre man who learned how to operate within a system, gained power only to abuse it,” Stewart said.
Stewart also pointed out another uncanny part of all this. “You have to understand, Walz came out of education. He was a teacher for many years before becoming involved in politics. So I’m confident that he worked behind the scenes with all of Minnesota’s labor unions to get them on board with his policy. And so they were simply unwilling to hear my case. I requested that they grieve the determination that I was in violation of the policy and they refused and it was really kind of heartbreaking. I understand there are problems with unions and yet they’re supposed to stand up for the individual members when their rights are under assault by an administration. They absolutely did not do that. That was very disappointing.
“It was a solid middle-class income. Now, that money is gone. I will never be remunerated for it, short of some kind of litigation in the future, which at this point I don’t really anticipate. But yeah, it was definitely a hardship for me and my family,” Stewart said.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
