One of Wisconsin’s largest health systems is facing a religious discrimination lawsuit over its implementation of a 2021 vaccine mandate requiring the COVID-19 shot for its health care workers.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates workplace discrimination, is suing Advocate Aurora Health<\/a>, now part of Advocate Health, alleging it broke the law in 2021 by firing a nurse who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n The lawsuit comes as the independent federal agency aligns its priorities with President Donald Trump’s administration.<\/p>\n The nurse, who is not named in the lawsuit, had applied for a religious exemption, which the health system denied, saying the request lacked a “sincere” religious belief, according to the complaint<\/a>. That is despite having previously granted the nurse a standing religious exemption from a flu vaccine mandate, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n Advocate Aurora, a regional system with hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois, had joined other major health systems<\/a>, including Ascension Wisconsin, Froedtert Health and UW Health, in requiring the shot in 2021, just as the highly contagious delta variant was fueling a new wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.<\/p>\n The nurse, who worked at an Illinois location, was fired in October 2021 after she was unsuccessful in appealing the denial, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n The lawsuit, filed Dec. 18 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeks a court order requiring Advocate Aurora to offer reinstatement, back pay and other relief.<\/p>\n In a statement, Advocate Aurora Health said it was “confident” its pandemic response had followed the law.<\/p>\n “It is also important to note that the allegations in this complaint stem from 2021 policies in place during the height of the pandemic that have since changed with the evolving times,” the statement said.<\/p>\n The lawsuit reflects new priorities of the EEOC, an independent federal agency that President Donald Trump has sought to exert more control over. In January, Trump fired two of the three Democrats on the bipartisan, five-member commission<\/a> before their terms were over, a move that remains<\/a> under a court challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n No president had ever removed an EEOC commissioner from office, Reuters reported<\/a>, and the firings left the agency, which already had one vacancy, without a three-member quorum until October, when a Trump appointee <\/a>won Senate approval.<\/p>\n EEOC members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the commission cannot include more than three members from one political party. They serve staggered five-year terms, so control of the agency typically does not change hands for a year or two<\/a> after a new president takes office.<\/p>\n Under Trump appointee Andrea Lucas, the agency has moved to roll back legal protections for transgender workers<\/a>; crack down on workplace diversity, equity and inclusion programs<\/a>; and focus on religious discrimination, particularly claims involving antisemitism or anti-Christian bias.<\/p>\n The agency has touted its wins on vaccine mandates<\/a>, including a recent settlement where Mercyhealth, a health system in Illinois and Wisconsin, agreed to pay more than $1 million and offered to reinstate employees fired for not complying with its COVID-19 vaccine policy.<\/p>\n The EEOC received a surge of religious discrimination complaints related to vaccines<\/a> in 2022, when many employers were mandating their workers get the COVID-19 vaccine or risk being fired or facing other sanctions.<\/p>\n In that fiscal year, the EEOC received nearly 14,000 complaints<\/a> of religious discrimination, making up nearly one fifth of total job discrimination complaints received that year. That’s compared to a little over 2,000 religion-based complaints the year before.<\/p>\n In 2024 \u2013 during former President Joe Biden’s administration \u2013 the EEOC found that Advocate Aurora Health probably had broken the law by firing the nurse, according to the complaint<\/a> filed in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n