The same law firm that sued the state of California over its pandemic church restrictions and won is threatening to sue a Coachella Valley hospital due to its employee vaccine policy.
Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to Eisenhower Medical Center (EMC) in Rancho Mirage on behalf of two employees and others who were allegedly unlawfully denied religious exemptions to receiving the COVID-19 injection.
“Where employees are not working directly with patients, there's a host of options available, and we've seen those options used in the last year when there was no vaccine,” said Richard L. Mast, a senior litigation attorney with Liberty Counsel. “So, there's no reason why they would not apply now as something that the employer can utilize other than simply ‘we don't want to’ and that's not what the law allows.”
The Sept. 30 letter alleges that Eisenhower Medical Center is taking adverse employment action against employees who have been improperly denied an exemption from receiving the COVID injection.
“EMC is administering its vaccine policy in bad faith and its arbitrary denial of religious exemptions for patient-facing employees is illegal,” wrote Liberty Counsel senior litigation attorney Kristina Wenberg in the Sept. 30 letter. “EMC must cease these practices immediately.”
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.
"EMC cannot show that it is so uniquely situated that it cannot possibly provide its patient-facing employees the same accommodations provided by hundreds of healthcare employers to thousands of employees throughout the nation, including in California," Wenberg stated in the demand letter addressed to EMC President and CEO Martin Massiello. "Given that numerous employers similarly situated to any EMC have effectively accommodated their patient-facing employees with the reasonably safe protocols, EMC will not be able to carry its burden to show that accommodation of its employees will cause an undue hardship."
As previously reported in the Southern California Record, 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.
Eisenhower Medical Center's vaccine religious exemption form allows employees to indicate a religious reason for declining vaccination, however, the form does not advise employees that patient-facing employees, those who work directly with patients, are disqualified from receiving a religious exemption, according to a Liberty Counsel press release.
“I am concerned for California employees but there was the issue of Governor Newsom unlawfully cracking down on churches in which we learned that sometimes it takes getting worse before it gets better,” Mast told the Southern California Record. “We support the healthcare workers and others in California and we're reviewing very closely."
The Eisenhower Medical Center vaccine mandate is based on the statewide Aug. 5 order, which allows for COVID-19 testing as an alternative to employee forced vaccination.