Dive Brief:
- An unnamed global technology company with a presence in 12 states will pay a class of employees $15 million to resolve claims of religious and disability discrimination related to the COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday.
- EEOC said its investigation revealed the company denied workers’ religious- and disability-related requests to be exempted from receiving the COVID-19 vaccination and terminated employees who refused to receive it. To avoid a lengthy dispute, the company chose to voluntarily resolve the charges through a conciliation agreement and did not admit liability, EEOC noted.
- As part of the three-year agreement, the company will review its policies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, provide annual training on religion- and disability-based discrimination and reasonable accommodations to all managerial and nonmanagerial staff, report accommodation requests to EEOC and post a notice on employee rights, the agency said.
Dive Insight:
While decisions around COVID-19 vaccination mandates may seem far in the rearview mirror for many employers, the consequences have continued on in both the private legal system and federal enforcement.
Last September, for example, a Chicago jury found in favor of a Catholic transit worker who was denied a religious exemption from receiving the vaccine. He’d argued that because the vaccine was connected to “aborted fetal cell lines,” receiving it would violate his sincerely held religious beliefs. The jury awarded him $425,000 in compensatory damages.
Other cases have been less successful for employees. Manufacturer 3M prevailed in a different September lawsuit, successfully convincing a judge that providing a religious accommodation exemption to a patient support employee would have posed an undue hardship on the company. Because the job required advocating for 3M products in person at healthcare facilities, and those facilities would not allow him on site without the vaccine, 3M would have been less competitive if the employee did not perform this work, the court said.
The $15 million technology company agreement is the second COVID-19 vaccination exemption-based case the agency has resolved in just the past month. On March 2, EEOC obtained a $150,000 settlement from healthcare company Rex Healthcare after determining the company illegally denied a remote employee’s religious accommodation request to be exempted from receiving the vaccine.
“There was no pandemic exception to workers’ civil rights and liberties,” Andrea Lucas, EEOC chair, said in a statement Tuesday. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the EEOC is focused on accountability and delivering results for American workers. Title VII and the ADA require employers to provide reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious beliefs and qualifying disabilities unless they can demonstrate undue hardship. When employers fail to meet that obligation, the Commission will act.”