Jury awards Catholic woman nearly $12.7M in lawsuit over COVID-19 vaccine

Dive Brief:

A federal jury awarded $12.69 million on Nov. 8 to a former IT employee for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan after finding that it refused her religious accommodation request to be exempted from a 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate and then fired her because of her religion, according to court documents (Domski v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan).

In a letter requesting the accommodation, the employee, who is Catholic, explained that she has a “sincere personal religious belief that human life begins at conception,” that the “COVID vaccines were either developed or tested using fetal cells that originated in abortions,” and that “abortion is murder and a sin against God,” the complaint alleged. The letter also cited portions of the Bible in support.

BCBSM rejected the request, then allegedly placed the employee on unpaid leave and ultimately fired her, the complaint said. She sued it for religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. After the verdict, BCBSM told the Catholic News Agency it had “designed an accommodation process that complied with state and federal law,” “respected the sincerely held religious beliefs of its employees,” and was reviewing its legal options, CNA reported.

Dive Insight:

The jury verdict and award hit on a theme playing out in recent cases: Employers risk costly litigation if they fail to carefully consider each religious accommodation request on an individual basis and if they make blanket assumptions about the legitimacy or sincerity of an employee’s religious beliefs.

For example, in January, a Michigan health system agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The health system had a policy requiring employees to receive annual flu shots, and the lawsuit alleged that it outright rejected a job applicant’s religious request to be exempted from the policy without properly considering the request.

According to the EEOC, the health system allegedly determined that his religious beliefs, as articulated in his application, were insufficient, without explaining why or giving him a chance to supplement his request, the agency alleged.

An August ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals highlights what may be an under-the-radar issue for many employers: An accommodation request can still be religious in nature even if it is based partly on secular reasons.

In that case, a surgical nurse and a pharmacy technician for a Wisconsin health system requested religious exemptions from the hospital’s COVID vaccine mandate. In their requests, they explained that they objected to the vaccine based on their Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the human body. But they also expressed concern over the vaccine’s safety and potentially harmful effects.

The hospital rejected their requests and terminated their employment. They sued, and in a 2-1 ruling, the 7th Circuit said they stated a failure-to-accommodate claim under Title VII. It reversed a lower court ruling dismissing the lawsuit.

Under Title VII, the controlling inquiry is “whether the employee plausibly based her vaccination exemption request at least in part on an aspect of her religious belief or practice,” the two majority judges wrote.

In the BCBSM case, after the insurer imposed its COVID vaccine mandate, its director of employee and labor relations allegedly told management he doubted the validity of any religious accommodation request, the complaint said. Later, during an HR meeting, he allegedly directed staff to conduct the religious accommodation interviews like “mini depositions,” with the goal of pressuring employees to get vaccinated, the complaint said.

BCBSM claimed the IT employee didn’t “meet the criteria for an exemption due to a sincerely held religious belief, practice or observance” and denied her request.

Although it could have offered her multiple accommodations, including wearing a mask and periodic testing for COVID, it allegedly refused to engage with her in any meaningful dialogue to discover which accommodations were possible. Instead, it followed a “one-size-fits-all” approach to handling religious accommodation requests, the complaint alleged.

The jury award included $315,000 in back pay, $1.375 million in front pay, $1 million in noneconomic damages, and $10 million in punitive damages. 

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