The ruling was filed: May 24, 2024
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit determined that the lower district court was incorrect in key findings of the case and as a result, the lower court’s decision was reversed (nullified) and remanded (sent back to the lower court). The higher court provided interpretation and guidance; citing case law, the higher court’s interpretation of provisions of The Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA), Title VII Federal law, and how the case should proceed in the district court. The higher court determined.
The appeals court decision addressed several critical issues in the case. Firstly, while the Mayo Clinic’s policy itself didn’t explicitly mandate termination, the accompanying guidance effectively made termination inevitable. Discrimination was identified as occurring not only at the point of termination but also when termination became unavoidable for the employees.
The three-judge panel from the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court, comprising Judges Duane Benton, Ralph Erickson, and Jonathan Kobes, unanimously ruled that the district court had improperly emphasized that many Christians choose to receive the vaccine. Judge Benton wrote,
“Beliefs do not have to be uniform across all members of a religion or acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others.”
This opinion underscores the court’s stance that religious beliefs, even if not shared by all members of a faith, are protected under the law. The panel criticized the lower court for not considering the entirety of the complaints and for focusing narrowly on parts of the complaints to deem the anti-vaccine beliefs as “personal” or “medical.”