A federal appeals court has ruled that the city of San Francisco must rehire employees who were fired from their jobs because they refused to take the COVID-19 shot, reversing a lower court decision.
In a unanimous ruling issued Thursday, a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that San Francisco must rehire employees who were terminated from their jobs because they declined to comply with a mandate requiring all city employees to take the COVID-19 injection. The appellants in the case, Selina Keene and Melody Fountila, objected to taking the COVID-19 shot on religious grounds.
While Keene and Fountila were listed as the appellants, more than 100 others were also named as plaintiffs. The defendants were the city and county of San Francisco, Mayor London Breed, and the heads of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
The circuit court panel opinion cited the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which struck down COVID-19 worship restrictions imposed by the state of New York when asserting that “the Supreme Court has recognized that the loss of protected religious freedoms, ‘for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.’”
“Appellants’ coerced decision between their faith and their livelihood imposed emotional damage which cannot now be fully undone,” stated the panel ruling.
“[San Francisco’s] finding that Appellants’ religious beliefs were insufficient to warrant any accommodations can only be described as a ‘dignitary affront’ … The circumstances surrounding Appellants’ termination constitute irreparable harm.”
The ruling concluded by reiterating that “appellants remain constructively terminated — forced to choose between their religious beliefs and their careers” and ordered the district court to “grant the preliminary injunctive relief consistent with this memorandum disposition.” It also noted that San Francisco’s COVID-19 injection requirement is no longer in place, meaning that “there is no burden” on the city for the plaintiffs’ “noncompliance.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was much litigation over various state and federal COVID-19 shot mandates, with some arguing that the requirements violated their sincerely held religious objections to the injection.
These religious objections included ethical concerns over the shots having been developed through research involving the use of fetal cells from abortion.
Thursday’s ruling isn’t the only positive development for those who lost employment for refusing to get the COVID-19 injection. In an executive order published last week, President Donald Trump ordered the reinstatement of members of the U.S. military who were discharged for that same reason.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
