LOS ANGELES (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. government has announced that health insurance giant Kaiser Permanente has agreed to pay $358,000 and take new measures to promote religious liberty as part of a settlement over its attempts to force employees into COVID-19 shots over their religious objections.

On August 2, 2021, the company announced it would “make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all its employees and physicians,” claiming that “[m]aking vaccination mandatory is the most effective way we can protect our people, our patients, and the communities we serve.”

This month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) revealed that Kaiser had been facing 12 different discrimination charges stemming from its refusal to make religious accommodations for employees objecting to that mandate. The EEOC found that Kaiser locations in multiple states were likely in violation of employees’ civil rights.

As part of the settlement, Kaiser agreed to pay the sum as well as undergo “equal employment opportunity training on reasonable religious accommodations” and instituted new processes for “reasonable religious accommodations made by employees in accordance with federal law.” It did not have to admit liability.

“The EEOC will monitor compliance for the agreements’ one-year term,” the agency added.

“We commend Kaiser for enacting corrective measures that will have a lasting impact on workers seeking religious accommodations in the workplace,” said EEOC Los Angeles District director Christine Park-Gonzalez. “Federal law requires that employers provide reasonable religious accommodations unless it poses an undue hardship that is substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business, and the EEOC will continue to enforce that all-important statue.”

As LifeSiteNews covered in 2023, Kaiser suspended over 2,000 of its workers in October 2021 for their refusal to take the jabs, a move that turned out to be ill-advised when they faced a 75,000-worker strike, with union leaders seeking higher pay and more hiring to address a staffing shortage. At the time, a search of Kaiser’s job database showed it was looking to hire at least 2,400 nurses and over 240 pharmacists and pharmacy techs.

A large body of evidence affirms both religious and medical grounds to refuse COVID shots. 

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 39,166 deaths, 222,741 hospitalizations, 22,533 heart attacks, and 29,232 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of May 29, among other ailments. VAERS submission are not proven cases on their own, but, in 2022, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in the journal Vaccine last year “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID shots, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April 2024, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 shots and offered several theories for a causal link. More recently, studies published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases and International Journal of Medical Science raised the possibility of the shots carrying risks of not only respiratory diseases but even kidney injury.

On top of potential risks, many religious and pro-life Americans also object to the shots on moral grounds, due to ethical problems with how they were developed.

According to a detailed overview by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson all used fetal cells derived from aborted babies during their COVID shots’ testing phase; and Johnson & Johnson also used the cells during the design and development and production phases. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science and even the left-wing “fact-checking” outlet Snopes have also admitted the injections’ abortion connection, which gives many a moral aversion to associating with them.