A federal jury last week awarded $7.8 million to six former employees of San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) districts.
The employees have been represented by Pacific Justice Institute where President Brad Dacus says they were denied religious accommodations to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
"These workers had religious, sincere objections against taking the controversial COVID-19 ‘vaccination,’" says Dacus. "They had deep beliefs and instead of being accommodated, they were simply just fired."
According to Dacus, that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs.
Also last week Vice President Kamala Harris made news for declaring there will be no religious accommodations for healthcare workers if she is elected president and can bring her abortion goals to full bloom.
Harris should take note of the verdict in her home state, Dacus says.
"The jury that we had there in this case was not a sympathetic jury by any means," adds Dacus. "They were all vaxxed themselves, and yet our attorneys did an excellent job making the case and convinced them to rule in favor of our clients."
The start of something big?
Dacus thinks "this should send a signal to governmental entities across the nation" that if they're going to discriminate and not accommodate people of faith in the workplace, they are going to pay a heavy price.
"We're already expecting this outcome to have a very positive impact on the many other cases we're handling across the nation on behalf of people who had religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccination and were consequently terminated," says Dacus.
