Saying the north suburban hospital system has launched an illegal and discriminatory “purge” of religious employees, a group of NorthShore University Health System employees have sued their employer for allegedly violating Illinois and federal religious freedom protections in the way NorthShore has implemented its COVID vaccine mandate.
On Oct. 25, attorneys with Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit religious freedom advocacy organization, filed a class action lawsuit in Chicago federal court on behalf of the group of NorthShore nurses and other health care professionals.
The lawsuit asserts NorthShore has illegally placed these 32 workers in an illegal game of pickle, forcing them to choose between either taking a COVID-19 vaccine and violating their religious beliefs, or standing on their religious principles, losing their jobs and suffering potential economic ruin.
NorthShore operates six Chicago area hospitals, including Evanston Hospital; Glenbrook Hospital, in Glenview; Highland Park Hospital; Northwest Community Hospital, in Arlington Heights; Skokie Hospital; and Swedish Hospital, in Chicago.
“Despite being willing and capable of complying with all social distancing, testing, monitoring, and facial covering requirements (and all other reasonable requests arising from accommodation for their sincerely held religious beliefs), Plaintiffs are being discriminatorily targeted, singled out, and punished for the exercise of their sincerely held religious beliefs,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit centers on NorthShore’s decision in mid-August to order all of its 18,000 employees, contractors and volunteers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. NorthShore announced employees had until the end of October to be fully vaccinated, or face potential termination.
Initially, the lawsuit said, the policy included provisions for religious exemptions. The employees in the lawsuit said they were among those working for NorthShore who then sought such exemptions. Many of them said they provided the hospital with detailed explanations of their religious objections to the vaccines, centered on their understanding that the vaccines were developed, in part, using cell lines obtained from fetuses which may have been aborted decades earlier.
They said their interpretation of Christian scripture, as found in the Bible, concerning the sacred nature of human life, led them to reject medical treatments derived, in any part, from such fetal cell lines.
However, in September, NorthShore allegedly shifted its policy and refused all such religious exemption requests, allegedly including blanket rejections of any request based on the belief the vaccines were developed using fetal cell lines. The complaint said the hospital claimed it was denying the exemptions using “evidence-based criteria.” The complaint, however, said the hospital system never provided any further elaboration, prompting plaintiffs to describe the criteria as “phantom.”
In response, the plaintiffs sought legal help. At the beginning of October, Liberty Counsel lawyers sent a letter to NorthShore, demanding they grant religious exemptions, or face lawsuits for allegedly violating federal civil rights law and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, among other statutes.
Under the language of the Right of Conscience Act, employers are forbidden from discriminating against “any person” in Illinois “in any manner” over that person’s “conscientious refusal to receive, obtain, accept, perform … any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.”
The state Right of Conscience law has been used by other plaintiffs elsewhere in Illinois to win court orders temporarily barring the enforcement of vaccine mandates, including, most recently, in Kankakee.
A growing number of vaccine mandate objectors have featured the law prominently in other legal challenges, as well.
The risk posed by the law to vaccine mandates in Illinois has prompted the administration of Gov. JB Pritzker to push revisions to the law, as they seek to explicitly exempt enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other regulations from the scope of the law.
In the NorthShore case, the plaintiffs said the language of the Right of Conscience Act should make clear that NorthShore’s employee vaccine mandate is “an impermissible discrimination against Plaintiffs on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs” and their rights.
After receiving the letter from Liberty Counsel, the complaint asserts NorthShore’s leadership allegedly stated it would approve the religious exemptions.
However, the complaint said, those approvals were “in name only.” NorthShore allegedly pivoted, declaring such religious exemptions would place “undue hardship” on NorthShore, and instead saying the company would only offer its workers the opportunity to apply for a transfer to remote work positions.
Further, the complaint said, NorthShore has already removed the workers seeking religious exemptions from the November work schedule, allegedly exposing the exemption application and review process as a “sham.”
“NorthShore has therefore made it clear that it is unwilling to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs of any of its employees, to allow them to continue their passion and life calling of serving others,” the complaint said.
“This is the same result that NorthShore set out to accomplish from the very beginning, when it denied virtually all of its employees’ exemption and accommodation requests for supposed failure to meet NorthShore’s phantom, undisclosed ‘evidence-based criteria.’”
The plaintiffs further note NorthShore’s vaccine mandate policy includes no opportunity for unvaccinated workers to instead submit to regular COVID testing. This, the complaint said, goes even further than COVID vaccine mandate policies prescribed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and President Joe Biden, and called for in official Illinois Department of Public Health guidance.
The plaintiffs are seeking a court order blocking NorthShore from enforcing its vaccine mandate, and of terminating the unvaccinated workers.
If the court does not step in, the complaint said, the plaintiffs risk “financial ruin.”
They are further seeking damages allowed under the Right of Conscience Act of no less than $2,500 per violation, plus treble damages, including for pain and suffering.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorney Horatio G. Mihet, and others with Liberty Counsel, and attorney Sorin Leahu, of the Leahu Law Group, of Chicago.