29 May 2024
ROCHESTER — An appellate court ruling opens the door for five former Mayo Clinic employees fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine due to religious beliefs to take their wrongful termination lawsuits to trial.
The three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on May 24 that U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim erred when he ruled in August 2023 to dismiss the cases that raised religious issues linked to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Minnesota Human Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and for breach of contract.
“The district court erred by emphasizing that many Christians elect to receive the vaccine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton of the Appellate Court wrote. “Beliefs do not have to be uniform across all members of a religion or acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others.”
The decision means that licensed practical nurse Shelly Kiel, registered nurse Anita Miller, paramedic Kenneth Ringhofer, CT technologist Kristin Rubin and bacteriology lab supervisor Sherry Ihde can proceed with cases against Mayo Clinic.
Mayo Clinic denied Kiel, Miller and Ringhofer religious exemption from receiving the COVID vaccine. Rubin and Ihde were approved for religious exemptions, but they refused to be tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.
In 2021, Mayo Clinic fired all five, along with an estimated 700 other employees for not complying with the vaccine rule. Mayo Clinic declined to give specific numbers of terminated employees or how many employees were granted exemption from being vaccinated. It issued a statement that “nearly 99 percent” of its 73,000 employees were vaccinated or had exemptions.
Mayo Clinic defended its decisions this week in response to the appellate court decision.
“Mayo Clinic established its vaccination program to protect the health and safety of our staff, patients and communities. The program included an exemption to accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs, and Mayo granted the majority of requests for religious exemptions,” a Mayo Clinic statement reads. “In its decision, the Court of Appeals did not criticize Mayo’s vaccination program or its employment actions; rather, the court merely ruled that the plaintiffs may resume their legal claims. Mayo intends to vigorously defend those claims, including through trial if necessary.”
Mayo Clinic did not say if it plans to appeal this latest ruling.
Minneapolis attorney Gregory Erickson, who represents the five plaintiffs as well as 105 other individuals with similar cases, dismissed the idea that Mayo Clinic could appeal the ruling.
“They can, but they have no chance of winning. The Eighth Circuit is very pro-religious freedom and the United States Supreme Court has got a six to three religious freedom majority,” said Erickson.
He added that the appellate court ruling didn’t come as a surprise.
“We knew we were going to win. The law on this is pretty clearly established and the district court basically ignored clearly established law,” he said.
Erickson said the next step is to start the discovery process and move toward a jury trial, possibly later this year. Looking to the future of his other 105 clients in Minnesota, Arizona and Wisconsin, he anticipates about 20 jury trials could result from Mayo Clinic’s actions.
He presented oral arguments on this appeals case in St. Paul in March along with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission James Driscoll-MacEachron in front of an estimated crowd of more than 100 spectators from the Rochester area, according to Erickson. Driscoll-MacEachron argued for Ringhofer and Kiel. Erickson added that the participation of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reinforced the strength of the case.
“That shows how far afield the district court’s decision was. The EEOC, which is the federal agency in charge of Title VII compliance, got their lawyer out of bed in Arizona and on a plane here to argue on our behalf,” said Erickson. “That shows how mainstream our legal arguments are and how fringe the arguments of the District Court were.”
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