A jury ruled on Thursday in favor of 13 employees with the St. Louis Public Schools System who were forced to take the COVID vaccine despite religious objections.
The court awarded the 13 employees $4 million for the injustice.
According to Schrag on Law, the plaintiffs Wanda Brandon and over a dozen other current and former employees in the St. Louis Public Schools system, sued the Board of Education of the City of St. Louis, Superintendent Kelvin Adams, and Chief Human Resources Officer Charles Burton in the Eastern District of Missouri raising claims of violations of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, Title VII religious discrimination, and the Missouri Human Rights Act.
In fall of 2021 during the height of the COVID pandemic, the St. Louis Board of Education adopted Policy 4624, requiring all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 15, 2021, or obtain an approved exemption.
The sixteen original plaintiffs submitted religious exemption forms to their employer. The employees cited their Christian, Islamic and Pentacostal beliefs that conflicted with the vaccine that was developed from fetal cell lines.
The St. Louis Board denied all 189 of the religious exemption requests and forced the employees to take the experimental vaccine.
The Board then suspended or terminated the employees who refused to take the COVID vaccine.
Hellbound and Down 