This year we have reported on both numerous appellate opinions upholding religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccines and an October 23 jury verdict of $7.8 million for six San Francisco transit employees who were denied such exemptions. Today, we report on yet another major jury award.

 New jury verdict includes $10 million damages to punish Blue Cross

On Friday November 8, a US District Court jury in Michigan awarded nearly $13 million to former Blue Cross Blue Shield employee Lisa Domski for wrongful termination and failure to provide an accommodation, after she submitted a request for a religious exemption to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Ms. Domski is a devout Catholic who had worked for this insurer for 38 years. The award included $315,000 for back pay, $1.375 million for “front pay,” $1 million for non-economic damages, and $10 million in punitive damages. Non-economic damages usually include emotional distress, and punitive damages are designed to punish the defendant, rather than to compensate the plaintiff.

 Blue Cross ignores EEOC guidance

On August 11, 2023 Ms. Domski filed her Complaint in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging that the “COVID vaccines were ether developed or tested using fetal cells that originated in abortion.” According to this document, after submitting her religious accommodation request, she was fired in January 2022 for not having “sincerely held” religious beliefs. This happened despite Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance that employers should “ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance.” Instead of following EEOC guidelines, Blue Cross did a “short, arbitrary interview with her regarding whether she had taken other vaccines or over the counter medications.” Per the Complaint, the company “terminated Plaintiff based on Defendant’s subjective standard of religiosity.” At the same time, Blue Cross did not mandate that vendors or independent contractors be vaccinated.

 “Ambush-style interrogations”

This Complaint also alleged that the accommodation process was both “arbitrary” and “woefully inconsistent” and that it included “ambush-style interrogations with employees who submitted religious and medical accommodation requests.” And while Blue Cross attorneys conducted this questioning, the employees were not allowed to have their own lawyers present. These employees were also told to “keep their answers short and to the point because time was ‘running out’ and time was ‘limited,’” The folks being interviewed we told that their initial written requests had not been reviewed, and “Defendant denied accommodation to interviewees with language barriers and/or difficulty answering questions due to medical conditions.” In January 2022, Blue Cross Blue Shield fired about 250 employees who had sought religious exemptions.

 Ms. Domski’s attorneys weigh in

In a November 8 press release, Domski’s attorneys Jonathan “Jon” Marko and co-counsel Hurwitz Law note that Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan had announced “on October 29, 2021, that all of its employees have to be vaccinated with the Covid-19 vaccine or be fired.” They add that Ms. Domski had provided contact information for her priest, but Blue Cross did not contact him. Marko offered that “our forefathers fought and died for the freedom for each American to practice his or her own religion. Neither the government nor a corporation has a right to force an individual to choose between his or her career and conscience. Lisa [Domski] refused to renounce her faith and beliefs and was wrongfully terminated from the only job she had ever known. The jury’s verdict today tells BCBSM that religious discrimination has no place in America and affirms each person’s right to religious freedom.”

Taken together, recent appeals court decisions and jury verdicts show us that our legal system still works to defend our rights. And these legal successes should help protect us from future attempts to coerce Americans into accepting unwanted medical interventions.