The University of Colorado (CU) is now on the hook to pay out $10.3 million in a settlement over discriminating against religious students and staff during its 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate process.
The December payout agreement between the university and 18 unnamed plaintiffs comes more than a year after a federal appeals court ruled the school discriminated against certain religious beliefs by requiring individuals to be a part of a formal religion that believes “immunizations are forbidden under all circumstances,” according to the court document. The religious exemption applied only to Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and did not include Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelical Christians, non-denominational Protestants, Buddhists or anyone who was not affiliated with a particular religious organization.
The Anschutz campus, which is home to the university’s health sciences, decided that because these religions were not entirely opposed to all vaccines, the opposition to the Covid vaccine was “personal” and not “religious.” (RELATED: Notre Dame Walks Back Effort To Water Down Religious Values After Backlash)
Placards advise physical distancing guidelines due to the coronavirus pandemic while directing incoming freshman moving into a campus dormitory at University of Colorado Boulder on August 18, 2020 in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)
The plaintiffs, who are all current and former students and employees, were awarded the money for “damages, tuition, and attorney’s fees,” according to the Thomas More Society. Two of the plaintiffs were fired over their “failure to comply” with the policy.
CU agreed to reform its vaccine exemption policy and will no longer inquire “into the supposed legitimacy of students’ and employees’ religious beliefs.”
“No amount of compensation or course-correction can make up for the life-altering damage Chancellor Elliman and Anschutz inflicted on the plaintiffs and so many others throughout this case, who felt forced to succumb to a manifestly irrational mandate,” Michael McHale, senior counsel at Thomas More Society, said in a statement announcing the settlement. “At great, and sometimes career-ending, costs, our heroic clients fought for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans who were put to the unconscionable choice of their livelihoods or their faith during what Justice Gorsuch has rightly declared one of ‘the greatest intrusion[s] on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.’”
“We are confident our clients’ long-overdue victory indeed confirms, despite the tyrannical efforts of many, that our shared constitutional right to religious liberty endures,” McHale said.
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