Lisa Domski sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan after the company refused to grant her request for a religious exemption to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. The Defender
This article was published on The Defender—Children’s Health Defense News & Views Website on November 13, 2024
A federal jury in Detroit last week awarded nearly $12.7 million to a Catholic woman who sued her former employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, after she was fired in 2022 for refusing to get a COVID-19 shot.
Lisa Domski worked for Blue Cross for 33 years, most recently as an IT specialist. In 2021, she sought a religious exemption to her employer’s vaccine mandate, saying it violated her sincerely held Catholic beliefs because the vaccines were developed or tested using fetal cells.
Blue Cross denied Domski’s request and fired her on Jan. 5, 2022. She sued the company in August 2023, alleging religious discrimination and violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
In their Nov. 8 verdict, jurors sided with Domski, awarding her $10 million in punitive damages, $315,000 in back pay, $1.375 million in lost future wages and $1 million for noneconomic damages.
Jonathan Marko, co-counsel for Domski, told The Defender his client “felt vindicated that a jury of her peers gave her justice by finding that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan discriminated against her based on her religious beliefs.”
Marko told the Detroit Free Press that Domski’s lawsuit was the first case to go to trial in Michigan involving an employer’s denial of a religious accommodation request connected to the COVID-19 shots.
Blue Cross rejected 75% of employees’ religious exemption requests
According to Fox News, Blue Cross introduced a vaccine mandate for employees in October 2021. The policy required all employees to be fully vaccinated or obtain a medical or religious exemption.
Domski, who worked fully remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and mostly remotely before the pandemic, submitted a written statement to Blue Cross outlining her religious beliefs along with the contact information of her priest and parish. Blue Cross never followed up, she said in her lawsuit.
Instead, Domski said Blue Cross denied her request and ordered her to get vaccinated. When Domski refused to get the shot, Blue Cross fired her.
According to Marko:
“[Domski] did everything Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan asked her to do. She filled out a religious exemption questionnaire, provided the information for her priest and gave a written statement explaining her sincerely held religious beliefs.
“Blue Cross never contacted her priest, did not request any additional information and told Lisa her statement was sufficient. It then denied her request without any explanation.”
During the trial, Blue Cross claimed it was unaware of Domski’s Catholic faith at the time of her firing and denied any discrimination, Fox News reported. According to Newsweek, Blue Cross questioned the sincerity of Domski’s religious beliefs in earlier court filings.
“Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan blamed Lisa for not having her religious accommodation request granted, claiming she should have provided more information,” Marko said. “Yet, Blue Cross could not articulate what specifically was wrong with her request and admitted it never requested any additional or different information from her.”
According to the complaint, Domski also alleged that Blue Cross interviewed employees seeking religious accommodations. One of the questions was whether the employees took over-the-counter medicines such as aspirin, Sudafed, Tums or Tylenol, falsely claiming that Tums and Tylenol were developed and produced using stem cells.
Marko told The Defender Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan “denied over 500 religious accommodations”—75% of the requests filed.
According to Marko, Domski began working for Blue Cross when she was 17. Her firing led to her losing “vision insurance, 401k benefits, bonuses, all the vacation time she earned and other benefits.” She has been unable to find other employment because she lacks a college degree.
‘The tide is turning’
Legal experts told The Defender they welcomed the Domski verdict and said it may help lead to similar outcomes in future cases.
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said:
“The tide is turning in COVID litigation. The jury verdict of $10 million in punitive damages against employer religious discrimination sends a strong signal — companies may not discriminate against their employees based on religion.”
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for CHD, told The Defender:
“The people have spoken. When the jury assessed $10 million in punitive damages, it was a day of reckoning. Violations of one’s sacred rights are no longer tolerated.”
Holland said Blue Cross violated federal anti-discrimination law.
“Based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the law requires that employers accommodate employees’ religious observance unless it causes an ‘undue hardship’ creating ‘substantial cost’ to the employer.”
‘Only going to get worse’ for Blue Cross
Lawsuits challenging workplace vaccine mandates and rejection of religious exemption requests are “starting to win in court,” according to a Reuters report published Nov. 1.
The report cited recent rulings against Bay Area Rapid Transit and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee as examples of this trend.
A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling raised the burden of proof for employers to prove “undue hardship,” making it easier for plaintiffs to file such lawsuits.
In 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission advised employers to “generally” assume that an employee’s request for a religious exemption is based on sincerely held beliefs.
Marko said he represents plaintiffs in 180 wrongful termination lawsuits against Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan. He told the Detroit Free Press these cases will “set the tone for Blue Cross because it’s only going to get worse for them.”
“All the other cases are religious exemption cases as well,” Marko said. “We think Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan’s position will be even worse as we proceed forward and we look forward to seeking justice for all of the innocent people who were forced to choose between their faith and their careers.”
Attorney Noah Hurwitz, who served as co-counsel for Domski, told the Detroit Free Press he’s involved in approximately 300 lawsuits filed by people who were fired after their employers refused to grant their religious or medical exemption requests.
According to the Detroit Free Press, employers named in these lawsuits include T-Mobile, Carhartt, Honeywell, Henry Ford Health, Ascension Health, Trinity Health, MotorCity and MGM Grand Casinos in Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Kim Mack Rosenberg, general counsel for CHD, said verdicts like Domski’s “send a strong message” to employers. She added:
“Too often during the pandemic rights were blatantly ignored based on unfounded fears and biases unsupported by science and law. We are finally beginning to see some of those wrongs righted and I hope these verdicts signal a return to protecting religious freedom.”
Flores said juries are more likely than judges to rule in favor of employees in discrimination cases. “Unlike the judiciary, citizens are not part of ‘the system.’ This eight-figure verdict illustrates precisely why all vaccine injury cases deserve to be tried by a jury of one’s peers.”
Flores said the likelihood of juries siding with plaintiffs in such lawsuits helped prompt laws granting a liability shield to manufacturers of vaccines and other medical countermeasures.
“The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act basically took that right away for this very reason,” Flores said.
Employers can no longer count on ‘complete immunity and impunity’
In a statement, Blue Cross told Fox News it was “disappointed” in the verdict and that throughout the pandemic, “Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, together with its employees, worked to promote the health and safety of our colleagues, stakeholders, and communities.”
Blue Cross is “reviewing its legal options,” including a possible appeal of the Domski verdict, and “will determine its path forward in the coming days.”
“Losers like Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan love to appeal,” Marko said. “Their chances of success are slim to none. It was a clean trial.”
For Flores, the key takeaway from Domski’s case “is that blindly following a government edict doesn’t guarantee the complete immunity and impunity these institutions counted on.”
“The next time a frenzy compels ignorance of common sense itself, it will be countered by sober reflection of financial exposure,” Flores said.
This article was published by The Defender—Children Health Defense News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CCBYNCND.
