A woman fired by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan over a COVID-19 vaccination has been awarded more than $12 million in damages.
A jury on Nov. 8 awarded Lisa Domski, a former employee of the company, $10 million in punitive damages.
Jurors also awarded $1 million in non-economic damages, $1.375 million in front pay damages, and $315,000 in back pay damages.
Jurors said that Blue Cross Blue Shield illegally discriminated against Domski when the company denied her request for an exemption from its policy requiring COVID-19 vaccination.
The company also illegally terminated Domski over the lack of COVID-19 vaccination, the jury found.
“Lisa is so thankful that a diverse jury of her peers saw through the company’s bogus decision to terminate her after 38 years of service. Clearly, the religious accommodation process was meant to stamp out religious beliefs of employees and promote COVID-19 vaccination within the company,” Noah S. Hurwitz, an attorney representing Domski, told The Epoch Times in an email.
In response to the ruling, Blue Cross Blue Shield said in a statement: “While Blue Cross respects the jury process and thanks the individual jurors for their service, we are disappointed in the verdict. Blue Cross is reviewing its legal options and will determine its path forward in the coming days.”
According to Domski’s attorneys, because she worked from home, the company could have accommodated her safely. They said Blue Cross Blue Shield also denied more than 500 other religious accommodation requests and fired hundreds of employees in addition to Domski over vaccine refusal.
The verdict in the civil case was handed down after a trial that started on Nov. 4.
According to Domski’s complaint, which was filed in federal court in eastern Michigan in 2023, she asked Blue Cross Blue Shield for an accommodation from its vaccine requirement because her sincere religious beliefs prevented her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
Domski, an information technology specialist who was employed by Blue Cross Blue Shield from 2008, said the company “conducted a short, arbitrary interview with her regarding whether she had taken other vaccines or over-the-counter medications.” Blue Cross Blue Shield then, according to Domski, ignored a warning from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to assume religious accommodation requests were based on sincere beliefs and to not assume employees were insincere “simply because some of the employee’s practices deviate from the commonly followed tenets of the employee’s religion, or because the employee adheres to some common practices but not others.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield said it did not discriminate against Domski and said her religious beliefs were not sincere.
This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.
