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OAN Staff Blake Wolf
3:06 PM – Friday, October 25, 2024
Six former San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) employees received over $1 million each after filing a discrimination lawsuit against the organization for wrongful termination after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccines.
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The suit was filed on the grounds of religious exemption, resulting in BART being ordered to pay over $7.8 million.
Although BART did initially approve vaccine exemptions, the suit argued that the plaintiffs weren’t appropriately accommodated, resulting in either working from home, or receive regular testing, which reportedly never happened. This ultimately resulted in the employees losing their jobs.
BART officials failed to prove an undue hardship and the six employees had revealed a genuine conflict between their faith and the vaccine, the jury ruled Wednesday.
BART, an organization already somewhere in between a $350 to $400 million deficit, stated that it had “no comment” regarding the recent ruling.
BART’s board of directors originally voted eight to one in favor of the vaccine mandates in 2021, resulting in the employees being fired despite their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
“Exclusion of religious people from the enjoyment of a right stands in violation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses and federal and state anti-discrimination in employment laws. 109 employees’ requests for religious exemption were denied,” the lawsuit added.
“The rail employees chose to lose their livelihood rather than deny their faith,” stated attorney Kevin Snyder. “That in itself shows the sincerity and depth of their convictions. After nearly three years of struggle, these essential workers feel they were heard and understood by the jury and are overjoyed and relieved by the verdict.”
The lawsuit added that between October 14th, 2021 and February 16th, 2022, approximately 179 employees requested COVID-19 exemptions for religious reasons, of which 70 got approved. However, none of them received any religious accommodations, meaning they couldn’t actually perform their job without the vaccine leading to their firing.
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