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Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and attorney Robert Meltzer of the Mountain States Law Group of Concord, Massachusetts, are suing Boston University for suspending a student who failed to comply with the school’s COVID-19 testing protocol.
As stated in the complaint filed March 23 in the U.S. District Court in Boston, Boston University suspended Caitlin Corrigan after failing to accommodate her disability, which she considers medically private.
The school required a specific testing regimen that provided for no alternative protocols for those unable to comply with the testing method mandated by the University.
The claim, brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), charges that Boston University not only refused to provide an alternative method of testing to accommodate Corrigan’s disability, but also refused to engage in the requisite interactive process required to reach accommodation, and otherwise failed to provide an effective, comprehensive and meaningful grievance process.
The complaint seeks declaratory judgment of the illegality of Boston University’s acts and seeks to compel future legal compliance. The plaintiff also seeks unspecified damages.
A Sept. 18, 2021, Boston Globe article profiled Corrigan, a New York resident who held a scholarship in a master’s degree program to attend Boston University’s School of Theology.
The Globe article emphasized Corrigan’s efforts to assist thousands of people in obtaining religious exemptions to vaccines, including the COVID shot.
The next day, Boston University informed Corrigan that she had no alternatives to the school’s COVID testing protocol.
“The trend of the past two years to force experimental health protocols on young people with little regard for their safety can’t be tolerated,” said CHD president and general counsel Mary Holland.
“Children are an investment in our future, not laboratories for experimentation in a time of unprecedented and arbitrary restrictions and requirements.”
The lawsuit challenges the right of Boston University to act with impunity when it harms students who have gone there to learn to be tomorrow’s leaders, Holland said.
“It’s imperative that Boston University be held accountable when it fails to act within established legal norms,” said Holland. “It’s ironic that the same school that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. attended, and of whom the school is rightly proud, would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act with such callous disregard.”
