A hospital in Springfield has been given an ultimatum regarding its employee vaccine policy by a law firm that successfully sued the state of California over its pandemic restrictions.
Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to Mercy Hospital on behalf of 14 healthcare workers who were denied exemption from forced COVID-19 vaccination despite their applications based on religious beliefs.
“We're looking forward to Mercy Hospital complying with the law,” said Richard L. Mast, a senior litigation attorney with Liberty Counsel. “Cox Hospital, across the street, is granting religious exemption requests very freely. So, it's not like Mercy Hospital has some far different conditions in its hospital than Cox does and Cox is complying with the law from reports that we hear. Mercy needs to as well.”
In July, Liberty Counsel was awarded a million-dollar settlement in Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry litigation against the state of California over COVID-19 church restrictions. The state agreed to pay Liberty Counsel an accumulated $1.35 million in legal fees and costs in order to settle the litigation.
The Sept. 29 letter alleges that Mercy Hospital is taking adverse employment action against employees who have been improperly denied an exemption from receiving the COVID injection.
“Mercy refuses to reasonably accommodate their sincerely-held religious beliefs that prohibit them from getting the COVID shots,” wrote Mast in the letter. “Some have been terminated already; still others have been threatened by supervisors, despite religious exemption requests being approved. In general, when Mercy has received religious accommodation requests, it has insisted on “more information” and “more explanation” of the employee’s religious beliefs, regardless of the fact that the employee’s original religious exemption provided ample explanation.”
While Mercy Health was founded by the Catholic order Sisters of Mercy in 1986, Mercy Health employees who requested a religious exemption cited their sincerely held religious beliefs against abortion and the alleged connection of COVID injections to aborted fetal cell lines.
“There's a lot of lip service given to faith-based ideals and when it comes down to it, we see very unmerciful behavior as the case may be here and not compliant with the law,” Mast told the St. Louis Record. “There are a lot of employees who have been very faithful employees and very good employees and they've been heroes this entire last year. Now, suddenly they're the ones causing everyone to be at risk for death and have to be kicked out. That's unfortunate and it's illegal as well.”
Federal law, under Title VII, requires that whenever an employer becomes aware that an employee has a religious objection to a work requirement, the employer has a legal obligation to engage in an interactive process with the employee to determine the sincerity of the employee’s religious beliefs and to determine the ability of the employer to accommodate those beliefs without incurring an undue burden.
"Title VII applies even though they're a Catholic institution because they don't make it an employment test that they are practicing Catholics or that they propagate the faith,” Mast said. “Mercy Hospital has some statements of non-discrimination on their website and so Mercy non-discrimination law is similar to Title VII, which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion when you're a public accommodation as hospitals are and when you are an employer that does not make it a test of faith in order to work there.”