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Mercyhealth to Pay $1M in Religious Discrimination Settlement
Becker’s Hospital Review reported:
Rockford, Ill.-based Mercyhealth will pay more than $1 million to settle U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges that alleged religious discrimination related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The agreement also includes offers to reinstate employees who were terminated for vaccine refusal, according to an Aug. 13 news release shared with Becker’s.
“I am proud of the monetary relief that we have obtained here, and I am equally proud that these employees — who remained committed to their religious beliefs and practice at great personal cost — will receive job offers,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas said in the release.
The EEOC investigation found reasonable cause that Mercyhealth discriminated against staff due to their religion by denying accommodation requests and either implementing a wage deduction or terminating them. From September 2021 to May 2022, Mercyhealth either imposed a $60 monthly “vaccine incentive charge” or terminated unvaccinated staff, the agency alleged. Employees who refused both the wage deduction and vaccine were dismissed.
The EEOC determined that these acts violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace religious discrimination.
US Federal Court Opens Door for Employees’ Religious Accommodation Vaccination Suit
A U.S. federal appellate court on Monday vacated an order of summary judgment against a Federal Reserve Bank employee’s religious accommodation claim arising from the institution’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The suit was filed by executive assistants Jeanette Diaz and Lori Gardner-Alfred.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a mixed ruling, allowing Diaz’s claim to proceed, while affirming the judgment against Gardner-Alfred’s claim. The court found genuine factual disputes regarding Diaz’s Catholic-based objections to vaccines. Significantly, the court held that her beliefs do not need to align with official Catholic doctrine, analogizing that “Martin Luther was regarded by the Catholic Church as a heretic” but still held sincere religious beliefs.
Monday’s ruling notes that courts are not permitted to ask whether a particular religious belief is appropriate or true, but are instead tasked with determining the sincerity of the belief. The court determined that summary judgment was inappropriate because there was a genuine dispute about Diaz’s state of mind. The case now returns to the district court for trial on Diaz’s remaining claims.
The court reached the opposite conclusion for Gardner-Alfred. Her inability to provide basic details about her religious organization rendered her testimony “wholly contradictory, incomplete, and incredible.” Monday’s ruling also affirmed more than $50,000 in sanctions against both plaintiffs.
California Doctor Drops Covid-19 Vaccine Policy Suit Against CDC
A California doctor is dropping her lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after the Trump administration changed practices with COVID-19 vaccines she’d previously argued forced her to closer her practice.
The CDC’s “reclassifying COVID-19 vaccination for healthy children to shared clinical decision-making, and removing the requirement that Medicaid pediatricians order and stock the COVID-19 vaccine” makes the battle moot, Samara Cardenas said in a Monday notice that she was dismissing her case.
The Department of Health and Human Services had made moves under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, that critics say work against COVID-19.
Remember Social Distancing? It Doesn’t Really Protect You From Infections, Study Shows
It turns out that the “six-foot” rule wasn’t as effective as scientists thought. New research now shows that waiting in line at the grocery store, airport security, or vaccination clinic might actually pose a much higher infection risk than previously understood.
Scientists have discovered that the widely-adopted six-foot social distancing rule offers surprisingly little protection in waiting lines. Even more striking: comfortable indoor temperatures, the kind most buildings maintain year-round, may actually create the worst conditions for airborne infection spread.
Research published in Science Advances reveals that temperatures between 72°F and 86°F can heighten infection risks by allowing infectious breath particles to linger at face level with minimal dilution. Both significantly hotter and colder temperatures actually suppress transmission risks.
