A former emergency room doctor fired by Tufts Medical Center in Boston for refusing — on religious grounds — to comply with the medical center’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate is suing Tufts for $6 million.
In a lawsuit filed Oct. 8, Dr. Theresa Gabana — who worked at Tufts for 29 years before being fired on Dec. 5, 2021 — alleged she was wrongfully terminated and her religious exemption request should not have been denied.
“Essentially, Dr. Gabana was given a ‘Hobson’s choice,’ when she was forced to ‘choose between her sincerely held Christian religious beliefs and her family’s livelihood,’” according to the complaint.
When Gabana chose to uphold her religious beliefs and applied for an exemption, “the hospital summarily denied her request wrongly claiming undue hardship,” Richard Chambers Jr., one of the attorneys representing Gabana, told The Defender.
The lawsuit demands $5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
Tufts imposed vaccine mandate after Massachusetts lifted emergency order
According to The Boston Globe, “most health care workers in Massachusetts were not required by state law to be vaccinated for COVID-19” at the time of Gabana’s firing. Instead, hospitals developed their own policies.
In her complaint, Gabana alleges that these hospital-specific policies were “unconstitutional,” in part because Tufts implemented its vaccine mandate after Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker ended the state’s COVID-19 state of emergency on June 15, 2021.
According to the lawsuit, Tufts announced its vaccine mandate on June 24, 2021. The policy took effect on Aug. 10, 2021. The deadline for employees to get the vaccine or obtain a religious or medical exemption was Oct. 18, 2021.
Gabana noted that the hospital allowed her to treat emergency room patients before vaccines were made available and that accommodations could have been made, such as allowing her to wear a mask. However, Tufts “summarily denied” Gabana “any accommodation,” according to the lawsuit.
On Sept. 3, 2021, Gabana submitted her religious exemption request to Tufts, raising concerns that the COVID-19 vaccines were “developed with or tested upon aborted fetal line cells,” in violation of her religious beliefs.
Tufts rejected Gabana’s request and a subsequent appeal and fired her on Dec. 5, 2021. Gabana alleges Tufts discriminated against her sincerely held religious beliefs, but also terminated her because they did not want to pay her the retirement benefits she would have soon qualified for.
Gabana, who was 61 at the time of her firing, says in her complaint that she has suffered “extreme anguish, an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, sleepless nights, and deep, unrelenting sadness” — and has been unable to find new employment.
Chambers separately told The Boston Globe that “there’s a law that exists that says you can put in for two exemptions; one is medical and one is religious. In this particular case, my client … put in for that exemption, and they said, ‘No, we’re not giving it to you.’”
Gabana’s attorney prevailed in a similar case
Chambers told The Defender that Gabana’s lawsuit is “analogous” to Bazinet v. Beth Israel Lahey Health Inc., a complaint brought by Amanda J. Bazinet, a former office manager at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Milton in Massachusetts, who was fired in 2021 for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds.
In August, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Bazinet, reversing an initial decision and remanding the case to the lower court. Chambers represented Bazinet in that lawsuit.
Chambers said that in Gabana’s case, Tufts is claiming “undue hardship” — a legal principle that was also at issue in the Bazinet lawsuit. According to the 1st Circuit’s ruling, “Undue hardship under Title VII requires employers ‘to accommodate, within reasonable limits, the bona fide religious beliefs and practices of employees.’”
According to Chambers, part of the discovery process in Gabana’s lawsuit will involve ascertaining whether Tufts granted other employees religious exemptions. “If so, it defeats their undue hardship claims,” Chambers said.
Separately, Chambers told The Boston Globe that Tufts also questioned the sincerity of Gabana’s faith.
“When your client says, ‘I have a deeply felt religious belief,’ and they say, ‘No, you don’t, you’re faking, you don’t have that,’ what more can you do?” Chambers said.
Tufts ‘knew’ COVID vaccine wasn’t safe or effective
In a statement provided to The Boston Globe, Tufts said it does not comment on pending litigation, but said the COVID-19 vaccine has been “a vital tool in reducing the risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death.”
“The health and safety of our patients, visitors, and staff has always been, and will continue to be, our greatest priority,” the statement read.
Gabana’s lawsuit questions assertions about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 shots.
“Following an announcement by the Food and Drug Administration … claiming that vaccines were ninety-one percent (91%) effective in preventing Covid-19 (Pfizer), it became immediately clear that was not true,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint lists prominent government officials who contracted COVID-19 in 2021 and 2022 despite being vaccinated, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Previous statements by former public health officials — including Birx and Fauci — acknowledging that the COVID-19 vaccines do not confer immunity, were also included in the complaint.
“Defendants’ ‘Vaccine Policy’ was based on false and deceptive claims that the vaccine was required to prevent employees from contracting the virus and spreading it to others, all of which was known by them,” the lawsuit states.
“Defendants at all times knew, or should have known, that the Covid-19 vaccine did not prevent contracting nor spreading of the disease.”