Michigan Woman Fired For Refusing Covid Vaccine Wins $12 Million Judgement
This is bad news for a slew of other employers, as Lisa Domski’s lawyer has 170 similar legal cases teed-up and ready to go.
Many lessons are still being learned related to the disastrous COVID policies, especially the Biden mandate for firms with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce was fully vaccinated or require unvaccinated workers to produce a negative test result on a weekly basis.
Some companies took the mandate to extremes, neither allowing for weekly testing nor accommodating refusals based on religious beliefs.
Now, one of the largest settlements in recent cases involving COVID-19 vaccine mandates and religious discrimination has just been handed down in favor of a former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) employee.
A federal jury awarded a $13 million verdict to a former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan employee who says she was wrongfully terminated for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine due to her religion.
Lisa Domski filed a lawsuit in August 2023 through the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division, alleging that the health system fired her after she refused to get the vaccine due to religion.
Attorney John Marko says Domski is a devout Catholic and applied for a religious exemption to the vaccine. Marko says Domski, who worked for the health system for nearly 38 years, provided a written statement explaining her beliefs and the name and contact information of her priest.
Domski’s lawyers asserted that she posed no risk to others as she had been working remotely during the pandemic and was on a hybrid arrangement prior to the COVID outbreak.
Court records show Domski worked 100% remotely during the pandemic and 75% remotely before COVID-19 emerged in 2020. Her attorney, Jon Marko, argued that even without vaccination, she posed no risk to others due to her remote work arrangement.
“Our forefathers fought and died for the freedom for each American to practice his or her own religion. Neither the government nor a corporation has a right to force an individual to choose between his or her career and conscience,” Marko said in a statement.
“Lisa refused to renounce her faith and beliefs and was wrongfully terminated from the only job she had ever known. The jury’s verdict today tells BCBSM that religious discrimination has no place in America and affirms each person’s right to religious freedom.”
The jury verdict gives Domski $10 million in punitive damages, approximately $1.7 million in lost wages, and $1 million in noneconomic damages.
This is bad news for a slew of other employers, as Marko has over 100 other cases teed-up and ready to go.
The payout comes months after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee paid a woman nearly $700,000 in a settlement after she was similarly fired for refusing to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
The Tennessee federal jury found in July that Tanja Benton “proved by a preponderance of the evidence” that her decision to refuse the vaccine was based on a “sincerely held religious belief.” Benton also worked on a mostly remote basis prior to the pandemic.
Marko said he is representing 170 others in separate wrongful termination cases who are taking similar action against Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan over the 2021 vaccine mandate. The trials are set to begin in the new year.
With so many public health officials itching to enact more pandemic policies in the event of other diseases (e.g., bird flu and monkeypox), companies should reflect upon these court cases and perhaps avoid being injection-fascists when it comes to novel viruses and newly developed vaccines….should anyone ever try to implement “two weeks to stop the spread” again.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Good, and I hope everyone gets to reap what they’ve sown when it comes to violation of rights.
Not enough; $500 million punitive would have been in keeping with the standard established by NY AG FA James in the Trump/Deutsch Bank case.
You shouldn’t have to prove deeply held religious beliefs in order not to be forced into a vaccine. You shouldn’t ever be coerced or forced into putting anything into your body that you don’t want.
You are absolutely correct.
I wouldn’t take a vaccine that had a main feature being the most lethal feature of the virus.
I ain’t that dumb.
But, I will not be denied free-will.
It has nothing to do with religion .
When are we going to see Dr. Fauci and the other doctors running our public health systems held accountable?
Never! Just to enlighten you to the situation, there would have been no covid if Fauci hadn’t defied Obama’a EO banning funding for Gain of Function Research and laundered the Wuhan grant money through the Eco Health Alliance!
This is true. Fauci unilaterally re-defined gain of function so he could keep funding research.
When? As soon as AG Gaetz and HHS Sec’y Kennedy are turned loose on him.
I wasn’t terminated, but my employer knew my medical record and I had to go for weekly testing in a very public place. The line outside the testing room let everyone know one’s vaxx status. Seems like a HIPAA violation.
HIPAA only requires custodians of medical records to keep the records secure.
I should have noted that I work at a state university and that every employee (myself included) has to pass HIPAA training every year. By forcing me (and students too) to stand in an area that denotes me as unvaxxed it’s essentially the same thing as failing to keep our personal medical records secure.
Medical practitioners can be so cavalier about y0ur privacy. Some 20+ years ago I was in a somewhat crowded Urgent Care facility in Florida during a trip. They had me sign in to establish order of arrival. I sat in the waiting room, while the receptionist yelled out names and then asked each patient why they were there — right across the room, for everyone to hear. And the patients shouted back, without a care in the world for their privacy. When they did the same to me, I yelled back “SARS!” (It was the public panic boogeyman of that era). I thought it might clear the waiting room, but I had overestimated the erudition of their clientele.
Whatever happened to “My body, my choice”?
And if anyone tries to say it isn’t the same, because if you get covid, you could give it to someone and kill them, an abortion is specifically intended to kill another human.
Napalm.
More please.
The US did away with napalm, I believe, last century. It wasn’t used in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
Fuel Air Explosives (FAEs) are more impressive anyway.
Leslie- speaking of napalm…..update on woke aerospace giant layoffs?
I work for a state agency. Got an exemption from the vaxx mandate with a conscientious objection (I made it clear I was not asking for a religious exemption, was somewhat surprised they accepted my exemption). But then I was banned from the campus. I asked, “What about accommodations? Can I go on campus if I wear a mask?” The answer – “No.” (With the advent of the vaxxes, masks seem to have stopped working.) They went further, telling me that my position description can require me to have in-person contact with other employees and the public – if that were to be required, I’d be terminated for not being able to perform a job function.
Fortunately for them, such a situation never arose. Unfortunately for me, I’m still working towards retirement.
Can we sue for being forced to take it?
Asking for teachers everywhere…..
Now, try the perps in Nuremberg 2.0
In remote parts of Africa, in years past, occasionally it would make the news that a team of vaccination-nurses/doctors had gotten wiped out by villagers who were unaware of all the goodness that universal vaccination was there to bring, for free.
Similar , not identical , issues.
Similar, not identical, adjudication processes
Similar, not identical, outcomes.