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    • Jury awards million to woman fired for not getting COVID vaccine. Here’s why.
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    Jury awards $12 million to woman fired for not getting COVID vaccine. Here’s why.

    Harry Posted on

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    A long-time Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan employee who was fired for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine for religious reasons has been awarded more than $12 million by a federal jury.

    The jury in Detroit handed down its verdict Friday afternoon, finding that Blue Cross discriminated against Catholic Lisa Domski of Wyandotte by denying her an exemption from the companywide vaccine mandate; This exemption was one that Domski sought based on his “sincerely held religious belief.” belief.”

    The jury found that denying relief, known as a compromise, was a violation of federal and state law. They awarded Domski a total of $12.69 million, or $315,000 in back pay, $1.375 million in future forgone wages, $1 million in non-economic damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

    Domski’s lawsuit against Blue Cross is the first of its kind to go to trial in Michigan over a case denying religious compliance with an employer’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, said his attorney, Jon Marko of Marko Law in Detroit.

    One similar situation Last month, a federal jury in San Francisco fined six Bay Area Rapid Transit agency employees more than $1 million for being unable to get vaccinated for religious reasons.

    Domski worked at Blue Cross for 32 years, most recently in IT. Blue Cross terminated employment on January 5, 2022, the deadline for all Blue Cross employees and contractors (including remote workers) to be fully vaccinated against COVID.

    Domski had sought a religious exemption due to his belief that the three Covid vaccines widely used at the time by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were either developed or tested using fetal cells resulting from abortion, and he believed that because abortion is wrong, injecting such a vaccine into his body is a sin. It is possible.

    “He was working from home, he was not a danger to others, and he had a sincere religious belief in the use of the vaccine,” Marko told the Free Press on Friday. evil.”

    According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services information noteAlthough the first three COVID vaccines did not contain fetal cells, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was indeed developed and produced by growing the virus in fetal cells, and a fetal cell line was used early on to test the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.

    Blue Cross may appeal the decision. In a statement released Friday afternoon, the insurer said it was reviewing its legal options and would determine its next step in the coming days.

    “Throughout the pandemic, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has worked with its employees to improve the health and safety of our colleagues, stakeholders and communities,” the statement said. “As part of this collaborative effort, in October 2021, Blue Cross and its affiliates enacted a vaccine policy requiring all employees to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or receive religious or medical accommodations.

    More: Racist messages about cotton picking target Michigan students after presidential election

    “In implementing its vaccine policy, Blue Cross has designed an accommodation process that complies with state and federal laws and respects the sincere religious beliefs of its employees. While Blue Cross respects the jury process and thanks individual jurors for their service, we are disappointed in the decision.”

    Marko said he has represented clients in about 180 similar cases against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan or its affiliates.

    “This will set the tone for Blue Cross because it will only get worse for them from here on out,” he said.

    Marko said he is also Catholic but chose to get vaccinated voluntarily, so he was initially a little skeptical of the case.

    “But when I really got involved and learned what Blue Cross was doing to these loyal workers, I knew I had to do something about it,” he said.

    Domski’s lawsuit, filed in August 2023 in U.S. District Court in Detroit, accused Blue Cross of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodation for an employee’s religious beliefs and practices. He also alleged discrimination and disparate treatment under the Michigan Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

    Blue Cross argued that Domski’s accommodation request did not meet the religious exemption criteria, according to court documents. The insurer attempted to interview him in December 2021, but he refused to answer the interviewer’s questions, saying he would rely on the written statement he provided.

    “My religious view has always been and remains that abortion is murder and a sin against God,” Domski said in his statement. “I must consider the ethics of using any vaccine that has been linked to fetal cell lines derived from abortion.”

    According to Domski’s lawsuit, the senior Blue Cross employee responsible for deciding who could be exempt from the vaccination requirement had told colleagues he doubted the validity of any request for religious accommodations.

    Blue Cross ultimately denied 75% of all religious accommodation requests and 250 employees were terminated in January 2022, according to the lawsuit.

    Blue Cross conducted interviews with employees seeking such accommodations that lasted up to 15 minutes and included 10 basic questions.

    According to Domski’s lawsuit, one of the questions was whether employees were taking the over-the-counter medications Aspirin, Sudafed, Tums or Tylenol, and that employees were mistakenly told that Tylenol and Tums were developed and manufactured using stem cells. .

    Ann Arbor attorney Noah Hurwitz of the Hurwitz Law Firm is representing Marko in Domski’s case.

    Hurwitz also said he is involved in about 300 other lawsuits filed by workers who were fired from their jobs for not receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. None of these people were denied religious or medical exemptions, Hurwitz said.

    Other employer defendants include T-Mobile, Carhartt, Honeywell, Henry Ford Health, Ascension Health, Trinity Health, MotorCity and MGM Grand casinos in Detroit and the city of Ann Arbor.

    He said that about 90 percent of the cases that have been resolved so far have resulted in settlements, and the majority of these cases are related to religious settlements.

    Hurwitz said medical accommodation cases can be difficult to win because they often require having a qualifying disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. So even a doctor’s note stating that an employee has had bad reactions to other vaccines in the past may be insufficient to avoid an employer’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement, he said.

    Hurwitz said he knows of healthcare systems that require annual flu vaccinations for all employees, even though the effectiveness of flu vaccines is well below 100%, because they want to avoid a mass outbreak situation where all hospital staff would get sick at the same time. He said such vaccine orders have been upheld in court.

    Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or [email protected]. Follow him on X @jcreindl

    Harry
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