Trump admin cracks down on vaccine discrimination
The Trump administration is targeting institutions that discriminated against Americans who refused the COVID-19 shots.
According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is addressing thousands of medical discrimination complaints that were ignored by the Biden administration. The agency negotiated a $1 million settlement last week with Mercyhealth, a health network with hospitals and clinics in Illinois and Wisconsin, for terminating unvaccinated workers who applied for religious exemptions. Mercyhealth has also agreed to rehire the former employees.
Earlier this month, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Silver Cross Hospital in Illinois for refusing to grant religious and medical exemptions to the vaccine mandate. In July, the agency sued Mayo Clinic for firing an employee who refused the shots on religious grounds. The EEOC also negotiated settlements with two major Las Vegas casinos, the Aria and the Luxor, for refusing to grant religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
‘Hushed up’ settlements
EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas says the mandate was one of the “greatest civil rights violations” in recent decades and made up roughly 20% of the agency’s discrimination charges.
“During fiscal year 2022 alone, we got almost 13,000 religious accommodation requests,” Lucas told the DCNF.
She said that while the agency had addressed some complaints under the Biden administration, it was not publicized.
“The agency was doing some work, but it was always doing it quietly,” Lucas said. “It was shoving it under the rug . . . It didn’t want to push it because it wasn’t the right narrative, apparently, for the Biden administration.”
Between the Biden and Trump administrations, the EEOC previously recovered $55 million for Americans who faced discrimination for being unvaccinated—but almost “none of it was public.”
“It was all confidential settlements that were really hushed up,” said Lucas. “We’re not doing that anymore. When we secure an important religious liberty victory, we’re going to talk about it wherever we can.”
Several court battles are currently being waged against vaccine mandates. The medical freedom group America’s Frontline Doctors has filed amicus briefs in Boyd v. Shriners, Brock v. City of Bellingham, and Sweeney v. UCHA, cases where employees were fired for refusing the COVID-19 shots. The organization has also filed a brief in Does v. Hochul, a case sitting before the US Supreme Court.
