Court Revives Religious Lawsuits Against Mayo Clinic's Vaccination Mandate
The Mayo Clinic, one of the world's most respected medical institutions, will face lawsuits from several employees it allegedly fired due to their refusal to get COVID-19 vaccines or tests based on their religious beliefs.
Mayo’s COVID Policies
The pandemic brought new challenges to all, and hospitals, in particular, were pressed to quickly develop policies to ensure patient and staff safety while continuing to deliver medical services. But not all hospitals had mandatory COVID vaccination policies for their staff during the pandemic. There was a brief period with a federal mandate for COVID-19 vaccination in healthcare workers at facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, though this was struck down in May 2023. Even without a federal mandate, many hospitals did implement their own vaccination requirements. These policies varied in strictness, with some requiring vaccination and others only strongly encouraging it.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has been a destination for patients seeking top-notch care for over a century. In the wake of the pandemic, Mayo Clinic required all employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This was done independently, rather than under the federal mandate. In early December of 2021, the clinic notified all its workers that if they did not comply with the vaccination requirement by January 3, they would be terminated.
Christian Plaintiffs Refuse to Comply
Shelly Kiel, Kenneth Ringhofer, Anita Miller, Sherry Ihde, and Kristin Rubin were all Mayo employees at the time. They were two nurses, a paramedic, a CT technician, and a bacteriology lab supervisor, respectively. They all refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine, citing their religious beliefs based on Christianity as the reason. They sought religious accommodations from Mayo to get exceptions to the vaccination requirement. For Kiel, Ringhofer, and Miller, Mayo denied the accommodations. For Ihde and Rubin, the clinic did grant them exemptions to getting vaccinated on the condition that they got tested for COVID weekly – but they refused to do even that.
Before the vaccinate-or-terminate deadline arrived, the plaintiffs sued Mayo Clinic for failure to accommodate their religious beliefs. They claimed that this was required not only under Title VII, but also the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA). The former is a federal law that prohibits discrimination in employment based on several protected factors, including religion. The latter is a state law that protects employees from religious discrimination and hostile treatment in the workplace (including failing to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices).
Christian Principles at Odds With Vaccine and Tests
The plaintiffs claimed that Mayo’s requirements to get vaccinated went against their religious beliefs for two reasons. First, they argued that according to Christian scripture, their bodies are “temples” that they must “respect and protect.” This reasoning was used by some of the plaintiffs to oppose the vaccination requirement, and the others to oppose the testing requirement.
Secondly, their religion opposes abortion, and part of this philosophy entails not using products “produced with or tested with fetal cell lines.” Aborted fetuses are not used to make vaccines. Instead, fetal cell lines are cells grownin a laboratory, generations removed from fetuses voluntarily aborted by their mothers in the 70s and 80s. Current cell lines do not contain any tissue from a fetus. Nonetheless, the plaintiffs believe that it violates their religious principles to use vaccines.
District Court Judge Throws Out Lawsuits
When the plaintiffs brought each of their lawsuits separately to a federal district court, where Judge John R. Tunheim considered them together. The judge dismissed each of the complaints because he reasoned that they didn’t sufficiently show that Mayo Clinic fired them for their religious beliefs, emphasizing that many Christians elect to receive the vaccine. He also said that the plaintiffs had only broadly stated their religious beliefs, rather than showing that taking the vaccines and tests violated them. In other words, he granted Mayo Clinic’s motion to dismiss the lawsuits on the basis that the plaintiffs didn’t sufficiently articulate a valid legal theory in their complaints.
The plaintiffs appealed the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and they got the EEOC to file supporting briefs on their behalf. The EEOC wrote that Judge Tunheim applied too high of a bar, and wrongly found that the plaintiffs' refusal of the vaccine was more personal or political than religious. It wrote: "There may sometimes be overlap between a religious and political view, but that does not necessarily place the belief outside the scope of Title VII’s religion protections."
Eight Circuit Brings Back Lawsuits
The Eighth Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs that Judge Tunheim had wrongly thrown out their lawsuits. "Beliefs do not have to be uniform across all members of a religion or acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others," the federal appeals court wrote. The decision noted that Judge Tunheim made the mistake of reading the complaints parsed out piece by piece rather than as a whole. Read a whole, the Eighth Circuit reasoned, the plaintiffs adequately identified religious views they believed conflicted with taking the vaccines and tests and plausibly connected their refusal to receive the treatments with their religious beliefs.
This doesn’t mean that Mayo has lost, or that the plaintiffs have won. It just means that the plaintiffs get a chance to move forward with their lawsuits in the district court.
Related Resources:
- What Are the Requirements for a Vaccine Medical Exemption? (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- Can I Sue Vaccine Manufacturers? (FindLaw's Learn About the Law)
- OSHA's Vaccine Mandate: What's the Answer to the 'Major Question'? (FindLaw's Courtside)
