ST. LOUIS — Attorneys who successfully represented a group of St. Louis Public Schools employees in a high-profile bias lawsuit over the district’s COVID-19 vaccine policy were awarded approximately $1.3 million in legal fees and litigation costs by a federal judge, in a decision that caps years of litigation rooted in religious discrimination claims.
In a December 24 order, Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri determined that the fee request submitted by the legal team, which included two lawyers and two paralegals who worked on the case, was reasonable and justified under federal civil-rights fee-shifting statutes after securing a significant victory for the plaintiffs, according to Bloomberg Law.
The lawsuit that gave rise to the fee award began in 2022 when 43 current and former employees of the St. Louis Board of Education filed suit challenging the district’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement, alleging that the district had unlawfully denied their requests for religious exemptions and punished them by firing or suspending them when they refused to comply with the mandate.
At the heart of the litigation was an allegation that the district applied inconsistent standards when evaluating exemption requests, failed to engage in meaningful individualized accommodation efforts and imposed disciplinary measures, including unpaid leave or termination, on employees who sought accommodation for sincerely held religious beliefs.
A jury trial earlier this year in a related but separate portion of the overall litigation resulted in a verdict in favor of a subset of employees who chose to go to trial rather than settle, awarding them both actual and punitive damages.
That judgment, according to court records, totaled just over $4 million, reflecting back pay and punitive damages under Missouri’s Human Rights Act alongside federal claims.
Clark’s approval of the $1.3 million fee award underscores the significant legal work that went into litigating complex constitutional and employment-law issues over multiple years, including defending against motions to dismiss and managing extensive discovery and pretrial proceedings.
The judge found that the hours billed and the hourly rates requested were appropriate, given the scope of the case and the results achieved for the plaintiffs, JD Journal reported.
For the St. Louis school district, the litigation, which was among a wave of COVID-19 vaccine mandate challenges nationwide, highlights the ongoing legal risks school systems and other public employers may face when implementing workplace health policies while balancing religious accommodation obligations under federal law.
The fee award resolves a significant chapter of the bias lawsuit, but the broader implications of the case are likely to continue influencing how employers structure and implement exemption processes in sensitive policy areas, particularly those involving religious liberties and workplace mandates.
The attorneys who received the fee award represented a coalition of employees and leveraged civil-rights statutes to advance claims that reverberated beyond St. Louis, ultimately resulting in both monetary judgments for individual plaintiffs and a substantial fee award covering years of legal advocacy.
