An Illinois state appeals court has ruled that Illinoisans can be fired from their jobs for refusing to get a Covid vaccine, because a state right of conscience law that otherwise protects people for refusing to participate in morally objectionable medical procedures doesn’t apply to anything related to Covid after Illinois Democrats specifically rewrote the law to ensure its protections didn’t apply to Covid vaccine mandates.
On Oct. 12, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court backed hospital company Advocate Health, saying the hospital and medical clinic system can’t be sued by a nurse who was fired after she asserted her religious beliefs did not allow her to comply with the company’s mandate requiring workers to receive the vaccine as a condition of continued employment.
Laura Lenz filed suit against Advocate Health and Hospitals Corporation in February 2022.
The lawsuit came about five months after Lenz was fired from her job as a nurse at Advocate Christ Medical Center in suburban Oak Lawn.
Advocate operates 11 hospitals and a host of affiliated medical clinics and other health care offices in the Chicago area, including Trinity Hospital and Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, and Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove.
According to court documents, Lenz was among a number of Advocate employees who lost their jobs in 2021 when Advocate imposed a mandate that all workers receive an approved Covid-19 vaccine or face termination.
Advocate, however, was just one of many employers in Illinois – including nearly all hospital systems - who acted in 2021 to force all workers to take a Covid vaccine, often without regard for employee religious concerns about those particular new treatments.
Such mandates were instituted, in part, at the urging of public health officials and state and federal officials, who echoed assertions from vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer and Moderna, and officials at the Centers for Disease Control that the Covid vaccines were “safe and effective” at preventing people from contracting and spreading Covid.
After the mandates were imposed, workers filed lawsuits against employers in Illinois and elsewhere, claiming the mandates violated their religious rights to object to injecting the vaccines into their bodies. Many of the lawsuits centered on objections raised by religious adherents who asserted that taking the vaccines would violate their beliefs, because the vaccines were believed to have been developed using cells obtained from aborted fetuses.
Some of the lawsuits met with success, such as an action that resulted in NorthShore University Health System agreeing to pay $10 million to workers fired for refusing Covid vaccines on religious grounds.
While many lawsuits asserted the mandates violated their rights to bodily autonomy, lawsuits in Illinois also focused on the Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act.
On the books since the late 1970s, the Right of Conscience Act generally protects Illinoisans from being compelled to participate in medical acts they believe contradict their religious or conscientious beliefs.
The law explicitly forbids employers and government officials 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 lawsuits against the Covid vaccine mandates have pointed to that language and prior court decisions, which plaintiffs said was clear and unambiguous in protecting religious objectors from having to choose between taking the Covid shots or losing their jobs.
In response to those legal claims, Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly moved swiftly in 2021 to amend the law, adding a provision known as Section 13.5, to specifically exclude any mandates related to the goal of preventing the spread of Covid-19. This by definition included Covid vaccine mandates, as the state has continued to maintain that the vaccines prevent the spread of the virus.
In enacting the legislation, however, Pritzker and his allies claimed they were not changing the law, only issuing a “declaration of existing law,” in a bid to tell courts the state never believed the law could be used to allow people to refuse mandatory vaccines and to allow the bill to take effect immediately.
Normally, such legislation would have required a three-fifths majority to gain immediate effect. The legislation fell short of that standard.
Despite the parliamentary maneuvers to thwart legal challenges, courts have still allowed the state to enforce the new law, as written.
In a split decision last year, for instance, the Illinois Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield agreed that the changes to the law should allow Pritzker to enact executive Covid vaccine mandates for a host of state and other local government employees.
And in the case brought by Lenz against Advocate, the First District Appellate justices also pointed to the changes to the Conscience Act to allow private employers to also fire workers who refuse to comply with Covid vaccine mandates, unless the company agreed to recognize a request for religious exemption.
They noted the law specifically carved out all medical treatments or procedures related to Covid-19, so long as they were intended to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Had the legislature provided that it is not a violation of the Act for an entity to adopt and enforce a measure or requirements that actually prevent contraction or transmission of Covid-19, the plaintiff’s argument might have some merit,” the justices wrote.
“However, the plain and unambiguous language of section 13.5 provides that it is not a violation of the Act for any person, entity, or corporation to take any measure or impose any requirements intended to prevent the contraction or transmission of Covid-19.
”… So long as Advocate adopted its Immunization Policy with the intention to prevent the transmission and contraction of Covid-19, … then it was not a violation of the Conscience Act for Advocate to enforce that policy.”
The decision was authored by First District Appellate Justice Thomas E. Hoffman, with concurrence from justices Mary K. Rochford and LeRoy K. Martin.
Lenz has been represented by attorney Jared M. Schneider, of Bloomington, Indiana.
Advocate was represented by attorneys Michael Resis and Heather Bailey, of Amundsen Davis, of Chicago.