The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear the case of an occupational therapist who sued her employer after being fired because she refused for religious religious to take the covid-19 vaccine.
The case was Cara Elizabeth Liberto Dodson v. The Lutheran Village at Millers Grant. As is ordinary when the high court declines to hear a case, an act that does not set a precedent, the decision was issued without comment or dissent.
According to a memorandum opinion of the Maryland U.S. District Court, Dodson worked for The Lutheran Village, a senior living center in Ellicott City, Md., as a licensed occupational therapist and integrative nutrition health coach. Dodson first asked her employer for an exemption from its vaccine mandate1 in February 2021, according to the trial court, “based on her ‘belief that the vaccine was tested and manufactured using aborted fetal cells.’”2 She said that none of the leaders of her church, a Baptist church in Frederick, Md., had told her it was acceptable to take the vaccine.
The employer granted her the exemption then because at the time the vaccine technically was approved for emergency use only and there was not a lot of data about it. Although the vaccine still only had emergency-use authorization, Lutheran Village several months later determined that it would enforce its vaccine policy, basing its decision on the advice of federal and local health public-health officials.
In denying Dodson a religious exemption, the senior center told her in a written statement that “granting [her] an exemption from COVID-19 vaccinations and the annual influenza vaccine could create a higher risk of the spread of COVID-19 to residents and team members” and that “[t]his poses an undue hardship on [Lutheran Village] as [it] strives to provide a safe place for residents to live and team members to work.”
The senior center gave her 30 days to get vaccinated or face termination. Her employment was terminated some time after she told her employer in a written statement: “I’m sorry, but a few months[’] time and … COVID-19 ha[ve] not change[d] my sincerely held religious beliefs. My religious leaders still support the decision to decline the COVID-19 vaccination, as murdering unborn children for scientific research is still considered immoral, unethical, and unconscionable.”
The trial court based its decision to uphold the firing without a trial based partly on procedural issues and partly because it determined as a matter of law that it was reasonable for Lutheran Village to follow the advice of health officials, particularly because many residents of the home were medically vulnerable to the virus. It ruled in part:
Summary judgment in favor of Lutheran Village is appropriate because the undisputed material facts establish that Ms. Dodson’s requested accommodation presented a threat to the health and safety of Lutheran Village’s residents and employees, thus presenting an undue hardship to the conduct of its business.
Dodson appealed that decision to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The appeals court affirmed that trial court’s without hearing oral arguments because “the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.” It was that ruling that was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The mandate predated the covid vaccine and originally applied only to the influenza vaccine.
As is the case with most vaccines, decades-old lines of fetal cells from abortions were used during the development of covid vaccines. No fetal cells are used in the manufacturing of the vaccines.