Tennessee Employee Awarded Punitive Damages After Being Fired for COVID Shot Refusal
- by Rishma Parpia
- Published
- Conscience
A jury awarded a settlement of $687,240 to a woman in Tennessee who was fired from her job at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) for refusing to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Of the total amount, $500,000 was for punitive damages levied against BCBST.1
Tanja Benton, who worked as a biostatistical research scientist at BCBST from 2005 to 2022, was terminated from her job after her request for a religious exemption to the company’s COVID vaccine mandate was denied. She appealed the decision, but to no avail. She subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the company.2
A judgment order written by Judge Charles Atchley of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee stated:
The jury found that Plaintiff, TANJA BENTON, proved by a preponderance of the evidence that her refusal to receive the COVID vaccination was based upon a sincerely held religious belief.
Judge Atchley further stated:
The parties stipulated that the remaining elements of Plaintiff’s claims were met and the jury was so instructed. The jury further found that Defendant, BLUECROSS BLUESHIELD OF TENNESSEE, INC., did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence either that it had offered a reasonable accommodation to Plaintiff or that it could not reasonably accommodate the Plaintiff’s religious beliefs without undue hardship. Liability for Plaintiff’s religious accommodation claims is therefore established by the jury’s verdict.3
Religious Exemption Denied Despite No Physical Contact With Patients
In an employment discrimination lawsuit filed in 2022 after she was terminated from her job for non-compliance, Benton, 52, said that she believed the mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) COVID shots were developed with aborted fetus cell lines and stated that she ‘cannot in good conscience consume the vaccine, which would not only defile her body but also anger and dishonor God.’4
In addition, the lawsuit explained that the COVID pandemic changed Benton’s work circumstances whereby she worked remotely so she has no physical contact with anyone except for 10-12 clients who she communicated with rarely in person. Benton also never worked directly with any patients. She said that after she appealed the denial to her request for a religious exemption, a company representative said that there were no exceptions for anyone with her job title and told her to find another job.5
mRNA COVID Shot Testing Confirmed Use of Fetal Aborted Cell Lines
Benton’s attorney Doug Hamill said that his client was a non-denominational Christian. He stated that her situation was different than that of healthcare workers that worked with patients:
Health care workers like frontline nurses, they sometimes are mandated to have vaccines as a requirement for their job. But this was different, because my client, as most employees of BlueCross, is not a health care worker. You know, BlueCross is an insurance company. They’re not a direct health care provider. So this was a little bit of an unusual situation.6
Douglas Laycock, JD, an expert on law of religious liberty, said that Title 7 protects general employment discrimination, including religion. He made a statement in Benton’s case saying:
Some of the people resist because at one point, stem cell lines from an aborted fetus were used in development. Some of those are sincere. They’re often confused about the facts.7
According to James Lawler, MD of Nebraska Medicine, the mRNA COVID shots shots do not contain any aborted fetal cells. However, fetal cell lines grown in a laboratory based on aborted fetal cells collected generations ago, were used in testing during research and development of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/NIAID mRNA COVID shots, as well as during production and manufacturing of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID vaccine.8
If you would like to receive an e-mail notice of the most recent articles published in The Vaccine Reaction each week, click here.
Click here to view Reference
No comments:
Post a Comment