Federal Appeal Filed in Case of Health Care Workers Fired Over Vaccine Mandate

The State of Maine is accused of “having its cake and eating it too” in a federal appeal filed in Boston this week that could have national implications for health care workers fired after being denied religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The appeal, filed on Jan. 24, sits with the First Circuit of Appeals. It is founded on the argument that federal and constitutional law trumps state law and policies.

It is also born out of a state where Maine’s now former CDC director Nirav Shah was just catapulted to second in command of the national CDC, serving as its deputy director.

Shah, who pushed for the elimination of religious exemptions in Maine, was named to the post on Jan. 12, just a day after the U.S. Health Department extended COVID-19’s status as a public health emergency.

‘One Or The Other’

The bottom line issue in the newly-filed appeal is Maine’s granting of medical exemption requests while denying religious ones.

Religious exemptions were banned by Maine Gov. Janet Mills, the primary defendant in the appeal, despite the longstanding provision under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination of any kind against religious beliefs.

While Title VII does not guarantee approval of a religious exemption it mandates a process for it, argues the Liberty Counsel, which filed the Maine appeal.

“Defendants cannot have their cake and eat it too. Relying on the vaccine mandate to say it would be an undue hardship to violate state law while at the same time espousing that the vaccine mandate does not prohibit employers from providing an accommodation under Title VII.

“It must be one or the other but cannot be both,” said Liberty Counsel’s founder Mat Staver.

Staver said the Maine court, in siding with the Mills administration, essentially “permitted a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ proposition.”

The appeal comes months after Maine U.S. District Court Judge Jon Levy’s dismissal of a complaint, on Aug. 18, 2022, filed by seven health care workers.

The mostly hospital nurses lost their bid to be exempt from the COVID jab for religious beliefs and thus their jobs.

Freeing Health Care Workers

Mill also threatened to revoke the licenses of all health care employers who fail to mandate the shot for all their employees, a threat similar to the threat by President Joe Biden to withhold federally-funded Medicaid and medicare dollars from hospitals not mandating the COVID vaccine.

In safeguarding the policies, Levy ruled that it would be an undue hardship for hospitals and other health facilities to grant the religious exemptions under Mill’s directives.

Liberty Counsel argues that Levy’s ruling is invalid because it undermines the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that the Constitution and federal laws take priority over any conflicting rules of state law.

The prevailing argument could widen an already promising legal course that would finally free healthcare workers from a jab-or-job ultimatum, an issue that so far the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to take up.

In July, Liberty Counsel won a historic class action settlement with NorthShore University Health System for denying employees religious exemptions from the COVID jab. The Chicago-based hospital giant will end up paying more than $10 million to 500 healthcare workers in the settlement.

Earlier this month, the tides turned in New York when a state Supreme Court judge ruled that Gov. Kathy Hochul and the New York State Department of Health (NYSDH) overstepped their authority by requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for health care workers.

“The mandate is beyond the scope of respondents’ authority and is therefore null, void, and of no effect,” Judge Gerard Neri wrote in his Jan. 13 decision in a lawsuit filed by a group of health care workers who have formed under the name Medical Professionals for Informed Consent.

Other Pending Lawsuits

There are pending lawsuits in other states as well including many in Florida, which unlike Maine and New York, has passed laws outlawing jab-or-job ultimatums.

Last month, in a story The Epoch Times did on the COVID vaccine mandate and its effects on the already critical nursing shortage in the United States, Brittany Woolerey, a Keiser University nursing student, described how she wasn’t able to complete her degree because she was denied a religious exemption from the healthcare facilities where she was due to do her clinical exams—the final step to becoming a registered nurse.

There are also new lawsuits in Maine filed recently by Health Choice Maine on behalf of EMTs who can still drive an ambulance but have to stay at least six feet away from patients if they are not inoculated against COVID—another Mills-born directive.

In a story by The Epoch Times, one unvaccinated EMT recounted a call when he drove an ambulance to a scene with multiple injuries and was forced to stand around while patients needed care.

Hospitals and state governments, however, are not throwing in the towel.

In a statement reported by Becker’s Hospital Review, the NYSDH said it disagreed with the state supreme court’s decision and would be “exploring all options.”

Maine’s largest hospitals, most of whom are named in the federal appeal as defendants, have also stood firmly by Mills’ COVID policies.

In several exhibits submitted in the Maine appeal, one of the hospitals MaineGeneral repeatedly told health care workers—when refusing to consider their religious exemptions—that only medical ones would be considered “under the Governor’s mandate.”