U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates

(LifeSiteNews) — A three-judge panel of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has rebuked the University of Colorado’s Anschutz School of Medicine for refusing to allow meaningful religious exemptions to the school’s COVID-19 shot mandate, ruling that it was “motivated by religious animus.”

Colorado Fox affiliate KDVR reports that in April 2021, the University of Colorado (UC) announced its requirement that all staff and students receive COVID jabs, leaving specific policy details to individual campuses. On September 1, 2021, it enforced an updated policy stating that “religious exemption may be submitted based on a person’s religious belief whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations,” but required not only a written explanation why one’s “sincerely held religious belief, practice of observance prevents them” from taking the jabs, but also whether they “had an influenza or other vaccine in the past.”

On September 24, the policy was revised to stating that “religious accommodation may be granted based on an employee’s religious beliefs,” but “will not be granted if the accommodation would unduly burden the health and safety of other Individuals, patients, or the campus community.”

In practice, the school denied religious exemptions to Catholic, Buddhist, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Protestant, and other applicants, 17 of whom were represented by the Thomas More Society in a lawsuit contending that administrators “rejected any application for a religious exemption unless an applicant could convince the Administration that her religion ‘teaches (them) and all other adherents that immunizations are forbidden under all circumstances.’” 

The UC system dropped the mandate in May 2023, but the harm had been done to those denied exemptions while it was in effect, including unpaid leave, eventual firing, being forced into remote work, and pay cuts.

Writing for the majority, Judge Allison Eid found that a “government employer may not punish some employees, but not others, for the same activity, due only to differences in the employee’s religious beliefs.”

“And when there is no plausible explanation for religious discrimination other than animus, it is subject to strict scrutiny, regardless of whether the government employer admits that its actions were motivated by hostility to certain religions,” she added.

Eid also faulted UC administrators for “declar[ing] that, based on its own research, ‘it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to take vaccines against COVID-19′” and therefore “decid[ing] that a Roman Catholic applicant’s religious objection to the COVID-19 vaccine ‘does not constitute a religious belief, but a personal objection.’” That, she stressed, is “precisely the sort of religious entanglement the Establishment Clause proscribes. As we have previously admonished the state of Colorado, ‘[i]t is not for the state to decide what Catholic—or evangelical, or Jewish—‘policy’ is.’”

“With this ruling in favor of our clients, the Court of Appeals has made clear that people of faith are not second-class citizens—they are deserving of full respect and the protection of the United States Constitution in their free exercise of religion,” responded Thomas More executive vice president and head of litigation Peter Breen. “By unlawfully and intrusively probing our staff and students’ religious beliefs, the University rendered value judgments that not only reeked of religious bigotry but violated our clients’ constitutional rights, as well as basic decency. We are grateful for this strong court decision in favor of religious liberty.”

Colorado Politics adds that an Anschutz spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling beyond noting that the mandate was no longer in effect.

On top of the substantial evidence linking the COVID injections to adverse medical events, many object to taking them for moral reasons, including based on the use of cells derived from abortion in their development. According to a detailed overview by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson all used fetal cells from aborted babies during their jabs’ testing phase; and Johnson & Johnson also used the cells during the design and development phase and production phase. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science and even the left-wing “fact-checking” outlet Snopes have also admitted the shots’ abortion connection.

According to the medical freedom group No College Mandates, 28 colleges and universities across America still require undergraduate students to take at least one COVID shot, down from 68 in February. In March, the group hailed Harvard University’s decision to finally drop its mandate as the “beginning of the end of the COVID mandate, the final nail in the coffin.”

U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates