St. Louis Schools Ordered to Pay $90,000 Each to Two Employees in COVID Vaccine Mandate Suit
A federal court on Thursday awarded $90,000 each to two former St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) employees who sued the school district after their requests for a religious exemption to the district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate were denied, St. Louis Today reported.
The two employees were among 43 plaintiffs who sued the district in June 2022, alleging the schools violated their First Amendment rights and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment and federal and state civil rights law.
Two other employees reached settlements with the district last month for undisclosed amounts. In July 2024, four employees received settlements of $25,000 each.
According to St. Louis Today, 35 other employees are engaged in mediation talks with SLPS. If those talks break down, a jury trial will follow.
In August 2021, St. Louis Public Schools announced the district’s vaccine mandate, which took effect on Oct. 15, 2021.
According to the policy, medical exemption requests would be considered “on a case-by-case basis” and the schools would offer “reasonable accommodations, absent undue hardship, to employees with sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, or practices that conflict with getting vaccinated.”
Fox 2 St. Louis reported in August 2021 that the school’s employees were required to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine as it was the only fully licensed vaccine available.
According to St. Louis Today, 96% of employees complied with the mandate. However, according to a November 2021 Fox 2 St. Louis report, 47 unvaccinated employees — including 44 teachers, two custodians and a secretary — were placed on unpaid administrative leave and one principal resigned in opposition to the policy.
Restrictions infringing constitutional rights ‘spread across the country like a virus’
In June 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri ruled in favor of the 43 employees who sued SLPS, opening the door for the employees to pursue settlements with the district.
According to Bloomberg Law, the court found that the employees had grounds to pursue most of their claims.
In its ruling, the court found the plaintiffs had demonstrated sufficient grounds to pursue their First Amendment and Equal Protection claims and their claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Missouri Human Rights Act.
“The District’s alleged Policy put Plaintiffs to a choice: compromise their convictions or lose their livelihoods,” U.S. Chief District Judge Stephen R. Clark wrote. “Restrictions impermissibly infringing on constitutional rights, like the right to freely exercise one’s religion, spread across the country like a virus.”
According to the ruling, while SLPS “granted the majority” of medical and disability exemption requests, it “categorically denied” all of the approximately 150-200 religious exemption requests it received, “apparently without the benefit of individualized review” — despite the district’s promises that all such requests would be reviewed.
“After submitting requests, Plaintiffs received substantially identical ‘Religious Vaccine Exemption Response’ letters in September of 2021,” the ruling stated. SLPS “eventually suspended without pay and/or terminated between 100 and 127 of those who applied for a religious exemption.”
However, in January 2022, the school district “changed course” according to the ruling and granted “most” of the previously submitted religious exemption requests, reinviting most of the employees who had previously been suspended or fired.
According to the ruling, SLPS argued that it could not accommodate the religious exemption requests because unvaccinated employees who came into close contact with a person infected with COVID-19 would have to quarantine for 14 days.
“But when the District suspended and/or terminated over 100 employees en masse for refusing the vaccine, the District may have imposed on itself a staff shortage of a worse nature than the one it sought to avoid in the first place,” the ruling stated.
The November 2021 Fox 2 St. Louis report quoted an unnamed school employee who said the remaining staff faced a “lot of added stress … because we are missing so many people.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Several other lawsuits have successfully challenged denials of religious exemptions
The settlements are the latest in a string of recent successes for plaintiffs across the U.S. who sued their employers for denying their religious exemption requests.
In November 2024, a federal jury in Detroit awarded nearly $12.7 million to a Catholic woman who sued her former employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, after she was fired in 2022 for refusing on religious grounds to get a COVID-19 shot.
In August 2024, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney who said she was wrongfully denied a religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine and was subsequently fired when she didn’t get vaccinated.
In June 2024, a federal grand jury in Tennessee decided in favor of a former BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee scientist who refused the COVID-19 shot, citing her religious beliefs. The jury awarded her $687,240 in back pay and damages.
In at least 10 other rulings last year, federal appellate courts ruled in favor of plaintiffs who had been denied religious exemptions by their employers.
More such lawsuits are in progress, including a lawsuit in Massachusetts by a former Tufts Medical Center emergency room doctor who refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, and a lawsuit in Oregon involving over 60 former employees of Asante who were fired after their religious exemption requests were denied.
A survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania in January found that public support in the U.S. for religious exemptions nearly doubled over the last six years.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
March 9, 2025 -
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States
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