Jury awards $12m to Catholic remote worker who was fired for refusing COVID-19 vaccine
A Michigan woman who was fired for not getting a COVID-19 vaccine has been awarded $12 million in a religious discrimination lawsuit.
The woman, 66-year-old Lisa Domski, was working as an IT specialist for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, which instituted a mandatory vaccine policy for all employees in October 2021.
As a devout Catholic, Domski followed the company’s instructions for applying for a religious exemption on the grounds that the jabs in circulation at that time had been made using fetal cells obtained from abortions. She submitted a written statement explaining her religious beliefs in detail, along with contact information for her parish and priest; the company never followed up with them.
In the letter, she expressed that getting the vaccine “would be a terrible sin and distance my relationship with God.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan denied her request and then threatened to fire her if she didn’t comply. A steadfast Domski refused to give in to their demands, and she was placed on a nearly month-long unpaid leave before being fired in January 2022, ending her nearly four-decade career with the insurer. She was just one of 250 employees who the company fired after seeking a religious exemption.
Domski, who worked 75 percent of her job from home prior to the pandemic, became fully remote during the pandemic, making her employer’s insistence on getting jabbed even more nonsensical. This is something her lawyer brought up, pointing out that there was no need to require a fully remote worker to get jabbed when customers and contractors who went to their physical place of business did not need the vaccine.
Her attorney, Jon Marko, said: “This was a woman who was working from home in her basement office who wasn’t a threat to anybody and was completely fulfilling all of her job obligations for 38 years. They made up their minds that they were going to discriminate against people who had sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The jury found that the insurer was engaging in unlawful religious discrimination and violated state and federal laws against it. She was awarded $10 million in punitive damages, along with $1 million in noneconomic damages and $1.7 million in lost wages. The insurer said they were “disappointed” by the verdict and are currently reviewing their legal options. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan denied three out of every four requests for religious exemptions to its vaccine mandate.
Numerous religious discrimination lawsuits filed across the nation over COVID-19 vaccine mandates
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee recently found itself on the losing side of a similar lawsuit, paying a $700,000 settlement to a Tennessee woman who was also fired for her refusal to comply with a vaccine mandate.
According to the jury in that case, the employee proved her refusal was based on a “sincerely held religious belief” and that, like Domski, she was mostly working remotely before the pandemic.
Even if you want to be generous and assume that Blue Cross Blue Shield was not aware at the time that the vaccines did not prevent the transmission of the virus, there is absolutely no public health justification for requiring a woman working in her basement to get jabbed.
Thousands of people across the nation have filed lawsuits against their employers after being denied an exemption from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with many cases involving religious objections. Last month, a jury awarded six Bay Area Rapid Transit employees in San Francisco $1 million each after being denied religious accommodations, while 500 workers who were denied exemptions from the Illinois-based NorthShore University Health System were given a $10.3 million settlement.
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