Students and staff at a medical school who were denied religious exemptions to a COVID-19 vaccine have reached a settlement exceeding $10 million, ending several years of litigation.

In a statement published Monday, attorneys announced that the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine agreed to pay more than $10.3 million to 18 plaintiffs who unsuccessfully sought religious exemptions to the institution's policy requiring students and staff to take the COVID-19 vaccine. The settlement follows more than a year of negotiations.  

"No amount of compensation or course-correction can make up for the life-altering damage Chancellor [Donald] Elliman and Anschutz inflicted on the plaintiffs and so many others throughout the case, who felt forced to succumb to a manifestly irrational mandate," said Michael McHale, senior counsel with the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit Catholic legal organization representing the plaintiffs.

"We are confident our clients' long-overdue victory indeed confirms, despite the tyrannical efforts of many, that our shared constitutional right to religious liberty endures."

In a statement shared by The Colorado Sun, Anschutz maintained that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which is no longer in force, was justified given the pandemic.

"This policy was grounded in science, public health guidance, and our obligation to safeguard lives during an unprecedented global crisis," the school stated. "While some chose to challenge the policy, the evidence remains clear: vaccination was essential to protecting the vulnerable, keeping hospitals open, and sustaining education and research."

Anschutz remains "deeply grateful to the health care professionals, faculty, staff and students whose courage and commitment protected our community and advanced our mission when it mattered most."

The settlement, which includes damages, tuition and $1 million in attorney's fees, comes over a year after a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the medical school violated the First Amendment rights of students and staff with religious objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine by denying their requests for religious exemptions.

The majority determined that the institution was "motivated by religious animus" in its denials of religious exemptions. 

The panel opinion also noted that CU Anschutz granted "exemptions for some religions, but not others, because of differences in their religious doctrines" and granted "secular exemptions on more favorable terms than religious exemptions."

Circuit Judge David Ebel, a Reagan appointee, authored a partial dissent to the panel opinion, writing that he saw "no evidence indicating that the University adopted either mandate out of an animus — that is, a hostility — toward religion generally or toward some religions in particular."

However, Ebel agreed with the majority that the "mandate was likely unconstitutional and should be preliminarily enjoined" because the measure "favored some organized religions over others, and favored applicants who belonged to those favored religions over other religious objectors."

The litigation against the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School dates back to 2021, when the case involved only two plaintiffs: a Catholic and a Buddhist. 

As documented in the appeal of a lower court decision siding against plaintiffs that was filed in the 10th Circuit, medical students who objected to taking the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds were forced to withdraw from the school. 

"Nobody should be coerced into choosing between their faith and their livelihoods, as I and so many others at CU Anschutz were forced to do at the whim of ideological bureaucrats," Madison Gould, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. "CU's total disregard for our careers and livelihoods gutted the years of study and self-sacrifice poured out by so many in pursuit of saving the weakest among us."

"God bless the lawyers at the Thomas More Society who worked tirelessly to see this case through to the end," said Gould. "We're forever grateful to them for standing by us when no one else would and for journeying with us for nearly a half-decade to this case's ultimate and successful conclusion. May our nation never witness anything like this travesty again."

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/medical-school-pays-10m-settlement-over-vaccine-mandate.html