A federal court dismissed the claim of a former FedEx package handler and COVID-19 denier in Colorado who sued his former employer for forcing him to wear a mask at work.

In reviewing the claim of Sal Celauro, Jr., U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix found no legal basis to support Celauro’s argument that a face-covering policy violated his right to make his own medical decisions.

“In fact, the Court is unaware of any constitutional, statutory, or common law right for a person to make his own medical decisions under circumstances germane to the present case, i.e., concerning mask mandates intended to protect the public in response to a global pandemic,” Mix wrote in a July 9 order.

Celauro, who worked for Federal Express Ground in Henderson, reportedly told the head of the facility in May 2020 that wearing a face mask would be harmful to his health. When Celauro repeatedly refused to wear one, the facility head asked him to leave the premises.

After being given the options of wearing a mask, taking a 30-day leave of absence or being fired, Celauro requested the leave of absence. When Celauro returned to work on June 25, he again refused to cover his face. Celauro allegedly brought a document with him to work saying he was exempt from the mask mandate pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Management again asked Celauro to leave.

“[T]he wearing of a mask is not about protecting People; it is about control over the People,” Celauro wrote in his federal complaint. He also referred to COVID-19 as a “sham,” claimed masks can cause death, and cited articles from Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano and a since-shuttered blog that spread misinformation.

Celauro asked to be allowed to return to work and for his supervisors to pay him $10,000 for “anguish, pain and suffering.” He also maintained there are “no studies/science proving masks work” – a claim that is untrue.

“An unmasked employee working in a shipping facility poses a substantial risk of harm to the health and safety of other individuals, and this threat cannot be eliminated or reduced by a reasonable accommodation,” FedEx wrote when asking the magistrate judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

In her order, Mix also noted she could not take action on Celauro’s claim because “the Governor of Colorado’s Executive Order was the direct cause of any injury allegedly sustained by Plaintiff, not Defendants’ company policy.” Celauro had not named the governor as a party to the lawsuit.

Celauro, of Englewood, has filed another lawsuit this year against Whole Foods Market – and specifically, “Security Guard (refused to give name)” – because he was asked to wear a face covering or leave the supermarket. Whole Foods has similarly moved to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis that it is a privately-owned business that can deny service for reasons not rooted in discrimination. That matter is also pending before Mix.

Mix’s order “is such bulls-t,” Celauro told Colorado Politics on Monday, when more than 600,000 people had died in the United States alone from COVID-19. “There was no pandemic. It’s all a fraud.”

A February 2021 essay from two doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention affirmed that mask-wearing is an effective means of reducing COVID-19 risk, both by blocking virus-containing droplets from an infected person and filtering out droplets for uninfected people. One study estimated that various types of coverings blocked between 47% and 99% of cough aerosols.

There is also established legal authority in favor of governmental restrictions during public health emergencies. More than a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state vaccination law in 1905 by reasoning “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.” Recently, however, federal judges have sided against the government in certain cases where public health orders discriminated, in their view, against those exercising religious freedom.

“The court does not doubt that the State made these decisions in good faith, in an effort to balance the benefits of more public interaction against the added risk that inheres in it,” U.S. District Court Judge Daniel D. Domenico wrote in granting a temporary restraining order to two Denver-area churches in October.

“But the Constitution does not allow the State to tell a congregation how large it can be when comparable secular gatherings are not so limited, or to tell a congregation that its reason for wishing to remove facial coverings is less important than a restaurant’s or spa’s,” he added.

In a statement responding to the dismissal of Celauro’s lawsuit, FedEx said that throughout the pandemic, “we have taken significant measures to help ensure the safety of our workforce and customers while providing an essential service. As such, we are pleased with the outcome of this matter.”