Cook County OK to fire hospital pharmacist for refusing Covid vax

CHICAGO — A pharmacist who was fired by Cook County after the county forced her to choose between keeping her job or violating her stated religious beliefs that she said forbade her from receiving the Covid vaccine, can't sue the county over her firing, because the county's needs outweighed her religious rights, a federal appeals panel ruled.

On Sept. 28, a divided three judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Cook County in the dispute with plaintiff Brooke Mason over her 2022 termination.

Mason had filed suit in 2023, about a year and a half after Cook County fired her from her job as a pharmacist at Cook County's Stroger Hospital in Chicago.

According to court documents, Mason had worked at Stroger since 2010. There, she "worked in a room with 20 other pharmacists and 40 pharmacy technicians," in addition to counseling patients "from the pharmacy window one day per month," among other duties.

However, in 2021, Mason came into conflict with her county employer over the county's new rule requiring all Stroger Hospital workers to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

According to court documents, the mandate was driven by the county's determination that universal vaccination would limit the spread of the virus and reduce staffing shortages at the hospital.

When the county implemented the vaccine mandate, at least 102 Cook County Health employees responded with requests for exemptions based on religious beliefs. The county, however, granted only nine exemptions, entirely to offsite workers.

Mason was among those denied exemptions. According to court documents, Mason based her exemption request on her Christian beliefs, which she said required her to "keep my body and soul pure."

"My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and shall not be defiled," she wrote in her exemption request explanation. "I am fully immunized as the good Lord intended."

Mason also pledged to continue wearing a mask at work and to practice distancing, as public health guidance had recommended.

The county, however, said the arrival of the vaccine had rendered the previous guidance and mitigation practices insufficient.

After Mason refused to take the vaccine and failed to find an alternative remote position within the county's health system, Cook County fired her in May 2022.

In her lawsuit, Mason claims the county's actions violated her constitutional and civil rights.

In court, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly sided with Cook County, ruling her rights did not outweigh the county's need to combat the spread of Covid at its hospital. So, Kennelly said, Cook County had the legal authority to fire Mason, because to allow her to work at the hospital unvaccinated would present an "undue hardship" to her employer.

Mason appealed, but the majority on the Seventh Circuit panel again sided with Cook County.

The majority opinion was authored by Circuit Judge John Z. Lee. Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi concurred.

Judge Rebecca Taibleson dissented.

Lee and Jackson-Akiwumi were both appointed to the court by former President Joe Biden.

Taibleson was appointed by President Donald Trump.

In the majority decision, Lee said the nature of Mason's work, as well as her busy in-person work environment, backs the "undue hardship" finding in this case.

"Here, Mason worked as a pharmacist in a hospital setting. She not only worked in the same room with numerous other pharmacists and technicians, but, as a pharmacist, she regularly interacted with patients and visited patient floors, where the risks and consequences of spreading the COVID-19 virus were high," Lee wrote.

In dissent, Taibleson said she believed her colleagues in the majority were letting Cook County off too easily in upholding what amounts to a "blanket" policy forbidding religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate.

The burden, she said, should lie with Cook County to demonstrate Mason's request would have resulted in an "undue hardship," not the other way around.

Federal civil rights law, Taibleson said, "requires employers to make exceptions to their generally applicable policies — even to policies supported by public health guidance —unless doing so would be an undue hardship. The record contains no evidence that (Cook County Health) seriously considered doing so in Mason’s case."

In response, Lee said the majority agreed the county could have done more to back its case. But they said they didn't believe there was any real dispute over whether requiring the vaccine would do more than masking and distancing to reduce the spread of Covid at the hospital.

"To be sure, the County could have provided more, but given the particularized challenges COVID-19 presented in the hospital setting, what the County provided was sufficient to satisfy its burden," Lee wrote.

Mason was represented in the case by attorney Jonathan Lubin, of Skokie.

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