Posted on 11/14/2021 2:24:44 PM PST by ducttape45
OKLAHOMA CITY – In a move to protect Oklahoma’s frontline healthcare heroes from religious discrimination, the State of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit on Friday to block Ascension Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest healthcare networks, from carrying out its plan to fire employees who have been denied religious exemptions from Ascension’s nationwide COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
In court filings, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights Enforcement says it began an investigation into Ascension Healthcare after receiving several civil rights complaints. In reviewing the complaints, the attorney general says it determined the hospital system was summarily denying religious exemption requests to the COVID-19 vaccines.
Before filing suit, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor says he made a personal attempt to speak with leaders of Ascension to persuade them to not suspend or fire people because of their sincerely held religious beliefs. Ascension refused to accommodate such requests, O’Connor said.
“We will not tolerate any form of religious discrimination against Oklahomans who seek reasonable accommodations from vaccine mandates based on their sincerely held religious beliefs,” O’Connor said in a press release.
Late Friday afternoon, Tulsa County District Judge William D. LaFortune granted the state’s motion to temporarily block Ascension Healthcare from firing unvaccinated workers.
O’Connor heralded the victory, “This is a win for religious freedom and our office with continue to fight against the unlawful religious discrimination.”
With all the victories going on in OK, I just might move there if I get fired from my current position.
Turning in mine tomorrow. Prayers for all of us still standing... snd for those who were unable to.
Thanks for posting. We’ll take our victories wherever we can.
1). the form and its questions are illegal to ask, and
2). any conclusions they draw are illegally invalid (as per Liberty Counsel).
Basically, I wanted to be upfront with them that they couldn’t snooker me. If they deny my request, I will file against them if the appeals process doesn’t bear fruit.
Plesaes send me the libery councils recommendations. I was in a hurry and may need to be less detailed.
Ascension health care is Catholic I thought. How could they deny such exemptions?
A friend of my daughter’s is quitting the local Chick-Fil-A because Chick-Fil-A is requiring a shot from its employees.
I do not know if that is a national decision or not. If it is it will just take them down one more peg. They are already beloe In ‘n Out
Hospital System That Operates in 19 States Blocked From Firing Workers Over Vaccine: Oklahoma AG
By Jack Phillips, November 14, 2021 Updated: November 14, 2021
Oklahoma was granted a temporary restraining order that blocks Ascension Healthcare from terminating employees, who were denied religious exemptions from the firm’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor had filed for a restraining order against the company’s requirement. On the night of Nov. 12, a Tulsa district judge granted the request, according to the O’Connor’s office.
“This evening, the Tulsa District Court granted the State’s Application for Temporary Restraining Order in our case to keep Ascension Healthcare from carrying out its plan to fire employees who were unfairly denied religious exemptions from their nationwide COVID-19 vaccination mandate,” the Republican attorney general said in a statement. “This is a win for religious freedom and our office will continue to fight against unlawful religious discrimination.”
Some Ascension employees who worked during the pandemic, he said, sought a religious exemption to the vaccine but were unfairly denied.
“Healthcare heroes who sought a religious exemption on this and other sincerely held religious belief grounds have been flatly rejected by Ascension,” O’Connor remarked. “In so doing, Ascension committed religious discrimination against Oklahoma healthcare heroes who oppose abortion.”
Ascension Healthcare operates in 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, including across Oklahoma. The company has not responded to a request for comment. The company is based in St. Louis, Missouri.
The firm, however, issued a statement to media outlets over the weekend that it mandated the vaccine because “we want patients to be assured and comforted with the knowledge that our doctors and nurses, other clinicians and associates, working in one of our hospitals or other sites of care, will either be vaccinated against both COVID-19 and influenza.”
Ascension Healthcare in July announced it would require its employees to receive the vaccine by Nov. 12 or face termination.
Last week, Ascension workers in Tulsa demonstrated outside Ascension St. John’s against the firm’s vaccine requirement.
“I applied for a religious exemption, I was denied,” nurse Lisa Johnson told KTUL. “I appealed the religious exemption denial and was denied a second time. We were pretty much told that if we were not compliant by the end of our work shift today we would be suspended.”
Nurse Tricia Smith, whose religious exemption was also denied, said that it’s “hard to justify going against my convictions for a job.”
“It would make me so happy for Ascension to have to reinstate us all and say we’re sorry because we didn’t do the right thing,” she added.
I'd be interested also - thanks
Me, too.
Please add me to your Vaccine Mandate Ping List. Thanks!
The media doesn’t want people to know about these stories.
ADDENDUM
I have researched the topic of Covid vaccines tirelessly over the past several weeks. As such, I want to add the following responses to the questions posed by the DD Form 3177. There are some things you need to know.
The questions on this form are legally invalid.
According to guidance received from Liberty Counsel:
Employees may have religious accommodation requests stating their sincerely held religious beliefs injecting any of the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines would be a sin and a violation of their religious beliefs because they are manufactured and produced with, tested on, or otherwise developmentally connected to aborted fetal cell lines.
Many employers have responded to employee submissions with intrusive and irrelevant questions about employees’ past personal health decisions and the theological bases for those decisions, or demands that employees vet their religious beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines with a third party to justify their accommodation requests.
The premises of these questions—that an employee’s current request for religious accommodation must be consistent with the employees’ prior health decisions and religious understandings, or must be acknowledged by a person other than the employee—are legally invalid premises for deciding religious accommodation requests, and any denial based on such premises violates Title VII.
In addition, according to guidance received from Liberty First Institute:
PAST VACCINATIONS DO NOT NEGATE A PRESENT OR FUTURE RIGHT TO DECLARE EXEMPTION. This is probably one of the most popular fallacies. Courts recognize that people can change and grow in their faith beliefs and understandings. Just because you got a vaccination in the past does not eliminate your right to assert a religious exemption now or in the future.
In closing, the Christian walk is one of constant, what is many times referred to as, sanctification. We learn and mature as we grow in Christ. What we may not realize to be evil or wrong early in the Christian walk, we discover to be evil or wrong later in that same Christian walk. Legal firms such as Liberty Counsel, Liberty First Legal and First Liberty Institute have put forth that the Courts recognize this concept.
For any entity to try and make a determination of a person’s spiritual maturity based their interpretation of answers to these questions, respectfully, is wrong in the eyes of the Courts, and cannot not be utilized in the framework of any inquiry by any entity, organization or governing body.
I got you added!
See Post #14
Good for you. I am very happy to see people fight these mandates. Too many cower and quit, which is a win for these companies and organization. Make them pay for every employee they fire, then sue them for wrongful termination, civil rights violation, etc.
Thanks a million.
Sure thing!
They are not run by actual medical people and they think they can get away with actions like this because they are big.
If you command a large enough share of the market you can get away with making your employees bend the knee.
Now it is the vaccine but it could be anything.
Don't want to give chemicals to children that will leave them sterile and unable to enjoy sex? You are fired.
Don't want to kill babies and chop them up for parts? You are fired.
Don't want to kill people who have been judged a drain on the system? You are fired.
Big anything is not good for liberty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.