PROVIDENCE – A federal court judge on Thursday denied a lawsuit filed by four health care workers seeking to halt Rhode Island’s Oct. 1 COVID-19 vaccination mandate because it lacks a religious exemption.
U.S. District Judge Mary Susan McElroy issued an eight-page ruling stating that the plaintiffs failed to make a case based an appeal to First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act, which is meant to protect employees against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, and religion.
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“The court finds that the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of these claims,” McElroy wrote. “Courts have held for over a century that mandatory vaccination laws are a valid exercise of a state’s police powers, and such laws have withstood constitutional challenges.”
McElroy ruled that the state’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers doesn’t rule out accommodations by employers based on religious grounds. Title VII applies to employers failing to make reasonable accommodations in respect to sincerely held religious beliefs, but not the government issuing public health regulations, she ruled. McElroy said “it’s not an accurate reading” of the state mandate to claim that it forbids an employer from creating an accommodation to retain the unvaccinated employee in question.
“While the regulation may make it more difficult for employers to accommodate religious objections, it does not create a ‘physical impossibility,” wrote McElroy, referring to the plaintiffs’ complaint. “Although the plaintiffs contended at oral argument that the regulation makes reasonable accommodation virtually impossible, there is no evidence before the court at this stage that would allow the finding of a likelihood of success on the merits on that claim.”
The plaintiffs were identified by pseudonyms and described in the lawsuit as a nurse for Lifespan Corp., a hospital clerk who is a Rhode Island medical school student, a physician with a medical practice in the state and a health unit coordinator for a Rhode Island hospital, of all of them claiming sincerely held religious beliefs that compel them to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine, “all of which employ aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development and production,” according to the lawsuit.
Gov. Daniel J. McKee emphasized during a biweekly COVID-19 update held in Warwick on Thursday that the state is not backing down from the mandate that goes into effect at all state-licensed health care facilities on Friday.
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @LaRockPBN.
