UVA Health ignored the religious objections of hundreds of its employees and fired them for choosing not to be vaccinated, despite the fact that the university's vaccination policy allows for exemptions for medical or religious reasons.
VAMFA members packed the US District Courthouse in Charlottesville on July 24 to support the eleven named plaintiffs in a federal case known as UVA-37 ( Phillips et al v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia et al), which seeks class-action status so that the court can award legal remedy to all of the UVA Health employees who were fired.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs requested an injunction against UVA to prevent any further vaccine mandates. Lawyers for UVA requested that the case be dismissed.
On August 8 Judge Robert S. Ballou declined the injunction but has not yet ruled on dismissal.
Attorney Sam Diehl of CrossCastle PLLC representing the plaintiffs said, "It is unlikely that Judge Ballou will dismiss our case, which will allow us to proceed. I'm optimistic that UVA employees will prevail."
Meanwhile, a victory was scored on July 27 in a similar case ( McCoy v. Rector & Visitors UVA/UVA Health System) in the Sixteenth Judicial Court in Virginia when Judge Claude Worrell ruled that Kaycee McCoy was wrongfully denied a religious exemption and ordered UVA to reverse its firing decision. The Court further ordered UVA to pay damages in the amount of McCoy's salary from the date of her firing.
Judge Worrell determined that the university stepped legally out of bounds by playing judge as to whether McCoy's religious objection was sincere. In his opinion, he wrote, "…here, we have essentially a religious test that is being applied to determine sincerity of belief, and that is violative of the separation of church and state…." Read more here.
A victory in both cases would force employers to refrain from second-guessing religious objections to vaccination and to simply honor them instead.
Virginia Medical Freedom Allliance
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