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The University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine will pay more than $10.3 million to 18 faculty and students whose religious exemptions to the school’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy were denied, a group representing the plaintiffs announced Monday.
The lawsuit challenged the university’s refusal to accommodate sincerely held religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. The plaintiffs, who sued anonymously, included physicians, medical students, nurses and administrative staff.
The Thomas More Society, which filed the lawsuit and represents clients in religious liberty cases nationwide, stated that the settlement is a rare instance in which plaintiffs recovered monetary damages under the First Amendment for a government COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Michael McHale, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, said the resolution cannot undo the harm inflicted on the plaintiffs.
“No amount of compensation or course-correction” can make up for the damage caused by the university’s vaccine mandate, McHale said. “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.”
Details of the settlement, which followed more than a year of negotiations, were not released. According to the Thomas More Society, the school agreed to cover damages, tuition and attorneys’ fees.
The settlement ends nearly five years of related litigation in state and federal courts.
University stands by vaccine mandate ‘grounded in science’
In a statement released Monday and reported by The Colorado Sun, the university stood by its decision to issue a vaccine mandate.
“This policy was grounded in science, public health guidance, and our obligation to safeguard lives during an unprecedented global crisis,” the university said. “While some chose to challenge the policy, the evidence remains clear: vaccination was essential to protecting the vulnerable, keeping hospitals open, and sustaining education and research.”
The University of Colorado Anschutz is home to the University of Colorado Medicine, UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and several other major medical and research facilities.
As part of the agreement, the university will treat student religious exemption requests on equal terms with employee requests and provide the same consideration for religious exemptions as it does for medical exemptions.
The school also agreed to stop assessing the legitimacy of individuals’ religious beliefs, reversing the practices that led to the lawsuit.
The university no longer has a COVID-19 vaccination mandate in place for staff or students.
Exemption decisions ‘motivated by religious animus,’ court ruled in 2024
The settlement follows a landmark ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. On May 7, 2024, the court reversed a lower court decision in its opinion, ruling that the university’s refusal to grant religious exemptions was “motivated by religious animus” and unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
The court found that the university granted exemptions unevenly, favoring “exemptions for some religions, but not others, because of differences in their religious doctrines” and granting “secular exemptions on more favorable terms than religious exemptions,” all of which was illegal.
The court also reaffirmed that government entities cannot judge the legitimacy of employees’ or students’ religious beliefs and declared the university’s policies a violation of “clearly established” constitutional rights.
Initially, the university rejected all exemption requests via a brief email from an anonymous “Vaccine Verify” committee, claiming the requests failed to show “a religious belief whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations.”
Although the university later amended its policy during litigation, the 10th Circuit ruled the changes insufficient, citing ongoing First Amendment violations and attempts to avoid accountability.
Staff, students forced to choose ‘between their faith and their livelihoods’
Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More Society, praised the plaintiffs for their courage. “The men and women at the heart of this case are true heroes,” Breen said in Monday’s statement. He added:
“They stood up, at great personal cost, to an injustice that never should have been inflicted on them — or on any American. These are kind, compassionate medical professionals who entered their field to serve and care for others, yet they were treated with shocking disregard for their rights and scoffed at for their deeply held beliefs.
“Because they had the courage to say ‘no’ when their religious freedoms were trampled, people of faith across the country now enjoy stronger protections.”
The Thomas More Society filed the initial federal lawsuit in September 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, representing a Catholic doctor and a Buddhist medical student whose religious exemptions were denied.
In October 2021, more than a dozen additional staff and students joined the lawsuit.
Plaintiff Madison Gould, suing under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 9,” described the university’s actions as coercive in the statement from the Thomas More Society. She said:
“Nobody should be coerced into choosing between their faith and their livelihoods, as I and so many others at CU Anschutz were forced to do at the whim of ideological bureaucrats. …
“CU’s total disregard for our careers and livelihoods gutted the years of study and self-sacrifice poured out by so many in pursuit of serving the weakest among us. None of that mattered to the University.”
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