A former employee of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was awarded nearly $13 million in her discrimination lawsuit against the company, which she says fired her for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine that she believed was against her religion as a devout Catholic.
Lisa Domski worked for BCBSM for 40 years but was fired in 2022 for disobeying the company's mandatory vaccination policy, implemented in October 2021, The New York Post reported Wednesday.
A jury in Detroit federal court awarded her $12.69 million in total damages, including $10 million marked as "punitive damages," nearly $1.7 million in lost pay, and $1 million in noneconomic damages.
BCBSM has denied discriminating against Domski and indicated it is looking at appealing the verdict.
The company's rules required all staffers to be fully vaccinated against the virus unless they applied for religious or medical accommodations.
Domski filed for an exemption but her request was denied, according to her lawsuit. She said that she had believed that the shots in circulation at the time were either developed or tested using fetal cells obtained from abortions, according to the Catholic Herald.
BCBSM denied Domski's request and threatened to fire her if she didn't comply with the mandate, firing her on Jan. 5, 2022, after a month-long unpaid leave of absence, according to her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Michigan in Aug. 2023, said.
Domski and nearly 250 of the company's employees were fired after they requested religious exemptions to the vaccination mandate.
The company claimed in its rebuttal that Domski did not have a sincerely held religious belief that prevented her from getting the vaccination. It also said it was not aware of her religion, even though she included contact information from her priest and parish on her petition for an exemption.
Meanwhile, Domski was not working in an office but had transitioned to working full-time from home during the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, she was already working from home 75% of the time.
Her lawsuit said that even though BCBSM conducted interviews with employees requesting exemptions, the talks were "arbitrary and woefully inconsistent."
Jon Marko, Domski's attorney, also questioned why Domski, as a remote worker, would need to be vaccinated.
"This was a woman who was working from home in her basement office who wasn't a threat to anybody and was completely fulfilling all of her job obligations for 38 years," he said. "They made up their minds that they were going to discriminate against people who had sincerely held religious beliefs."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.