Hospital workers who were fired by NorthShore University Health System for not receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, or who were forced by NorthShore against their will to get vaccinated to keep their jobs, will be in line for as much as $25,000 each, and could be eligible to get their jobs back, under a $10 million deal to end a class action lawsuit against NorthShore over its refusal to accommodate religious objectors in its workplace Covid vaccine mandate.
The settlement was unveiled in Chicago federal court on July 29.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, from the Orlando, Florida-based conservative religious freedom litigation nonprofit Liberty Counsel, said the settlement was “the first of its kind in the nation,” and should stand as a “strong warning” to employers who turn deaf ears to religious objectors to workplace Covid vaccine mandates.
Horatio Mihet
| Liberty Counsel
“This settlement should be a wake-up call to every employer that did not accommodate or exempt employees who opposed the Covid shots for religious reasons,” said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver.
NorthShore University Health System was sued last fall, after NorthShore ordered all of its 18,000 employees, contractors and volunteers to receive a full dose of an approved Covid-19 vaccine by the end of October 2021, or face termination.
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.
In the class action lawsuit, a group of workers claimed NorthShore had illegally forced the workers to choose between keeping their jobs or violating their sincerely held religious beliefs, in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act.
Many said they provided the hospital with detailed explanations of their religious objections to the vaccines, most centered on their understanding that the vaccines were developed, in part, using cell lines obtained from aborted fetuses.
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, they claimed NorthShore still refused their exemption requests, through a review process that called a “sham,” set up to conceal their desire to “purge” religious adherents from the hospitals’ employment ranks.
The case also asserted NorthShore took these actions without any evidence that unvaccinated employees posed any greater health risk to patients, than vaccinated employees who may also contract and spread Covid, a position now backed by a growing number of scientific studies.
After a federal judge declined to grant them an injunction preventing NorthShore from taking action, hundreds of employees who were refused religious exemptions, and who still refused to receive a Covid vaccine, were fired.
According to court documents filed in January, hundreds more NorthShore workers were preparing to file lawsuits of their own against their former employer for terminating them, allegedly in violation of their religious freedom rights under the law.
Faced with such growing litigation threats and the potential for steep losses in court, NorthShore opted to settle the case. According to a brief filed in court explaining the settlement, the deal was reached in May, at about the same time plaintiffs had been expected to formally ask a judge to allow them to combine all of the various legal claims into one single class action.
Under the settlement, NorthShore continued to deny the workers’ legal claims, and admitted no wrongdoing.
Under the deal, however, NorthShore has agreed to significantly revise its vaccine mandate policies to accommodate religious objectors in all positions within NorthShore’s organization, to align with the religious freedom protections within Title VII. Further, NorthShore can no longer bar unvaccinated employees with religious exemptions from any position within its organization, according to the settlement.
The hospital system will also pay more than $10.3 million to end the lawsuit.
Of that total, about $2.1 million would be paid to Liberty Counsel, an amount they said was “far below the typical 33% requested” in such class actions.
The remainder would be mostly divided among 523 former and current NorthShore employees whose requests for religious exemption from NorthShore’s Covid vaccine mandate was either refused or ignored, and who either then lost their jobs or received the Covid vaccine under threat of termination.
The settlement could pay $25,000 each to workers who were fired for refusing the Covid vaccine on religious grounds.
Workers whose religious objections were overridden, and then took the vaccine under threat, could receive $3,000 each.
Final payment amounts will depend on the number and types of claims received from eligible current and former NorthShore workers, according to the memorandum filed in support of the settlement.
The plaintiffs who sued NorthShore could receive an additional $20,000 each for their willingness to sign onto the lawsuit, according to the memorandum.
Anyone who was fired may also be eligible to seek their old jobs back, with no loss of seniority, according to the memorandum.
At this point, the plaintiffs are asking the court to grant preliminary approval to the settlement. No further hearing dates on the settlement have yet been set.
Payments would be made 60 to 90 days after the court grants final approval to the settlement.
“The drastic policy change and substantial monetary relief required by the settlement will bring a strong measure of justice to NorthShore’s employees who were callously forced to choose between their conscience and their jobs,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Horatio Mihet, of Liberty Counsel, in a prepared statement.
“This settlement should also serve as a strong warning to employers across the nation that they cannot refuse to accommodate those with sincere religious objections to forced vaccination mandates.”
Plaintiffs were represented by Liberty Counsel attorneys Mihet, Staver, Roger K. Gannam and Daniel J. Schmid; and Sorin A. Leahu, of Leahu Law Group, of Chicago.
NorthShore has been represented by attorneys David E. Dahlquist, Kevin P. Simpson, Nasir Hussain and Savannah L. Murin, of Winston & Strawn, of Chicago; and Marc R. Jacobs, of Seyfarth Shaw, of Chicago.