Colorado accused of religious discrimination over vaccine exemption requests

Denver, Colorado (Image courtesy Pixabay)

In Colorado, a state that already has been scolded publicly by the U.S. Supreme Court for its “hostility” to Christianity, there now are accusations that the University of Colorado’s Anschutz School of Medicine is discriminating based on religion.

A federal complaint has been filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of a Christian and a Buddhist who “are unable to take the school’s mandated vaccine because of sincerely and deeply held religious objections.”

And for that, they are being threatened with “adverse actions.”

“The University of Colorado has enacted a policy dividing its staff and students into two categories based on their religious beliefs,” explained Thomas More Society Vice President and Senior Counsel Peter Breen about the case in U.S. District Court in Colorado.

“The ‘sheep’ whose religions teach the approved orthodoxy receive exemptions to the university’s COVID vaccine mandate, but the ‘goats’ who hold non-approved religious beliefs are refused exemptions, and then fired or expelled. Only those who belong to religions ‘whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations’ may ascend to the university’s ‘Valhalla.’ All others, including the plaintiffs here—a Catholic and a Buddhist—must be cast out,” he explained.

The legal team explained a Catholic pediatrician employed by the university at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado Springs faces imminent firing over her unwillingness to take a COVID vaccine, to which she holds sincere religious objections.

Lawyers are asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the university from taking further adverse action against the dedicated doctor.

Further, a devout Buddhist who was forced out of his first-year program at the school for his religious objection to the COVID vaccine also is a plaintiff in the case.

“The university’s foray into theology has gone even further, with its administrators probing and debating the religious beliefs of its staff and students, rendering value judgments on believers in an inquisition that further violates the First Amendment,” Breen explained.

The legal team explained the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is the academic health sciences campus in Aurora, Colorado, that houses the University of Colorado’s six health sciences-related schools and colleges.

Starting Sept. 1, officials there demanded that students and employees “who currently or may in the future access any CU Anschutz facility or participate in any CU Anschutz program” or even “interact” with the Anschutz community be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

According to the lawsuit, Dr. Jane Doe is a devout Catholic physician who holds a master’s degree in Catholic bioethics. Because of the COVID vaccines’ reliance on fetal cell strains derived from aborted fetal tissue, in development or testing, she believes that receiving the shot would violate her deeply held religious beliefs that abortion is a grave sin.

John Doe, a Buddhist and medical student, avoids products developed through the killing or harming of animals (including human beings) as he seeks to live a life consistent with the “five precepts” of Buddhism. The undeniable connection of authorized COVID vaccinations to aborted children prohibit his ability to comply with the school’s unconstitutional mandate.

The court filing charges the university’s “explicit religious discrimination” violates the traditions of government neutrality toward religion.

The case says the school is in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and seeks court intervention as well as damages.

Colorado’s scolding from the Supreme Court came in the case, won by baker Jack Phillips, in which the state attempted to punish and then “indoctrinate” him because he declined to violate his religious beliefs and promote same-sex unions with a wedding cake.

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