Despite a division in one of the two panels of judges to reinstate religious discrimination lawsuits against a Wisconsin hospital system, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit aligned with its sister court’s decisions over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In two separate panels, Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Y. Scudder authored the majority opinions and said the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin erred in dismissing three lawsuits from former employees of Aspirus Inc., represented by Ruder Ware in Wisconsin. The majority in both cases said that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected the employees’ requests to refuse the vaccine under their religious beliefs at the pleading stage by taking their exemption requests on the face of their religious beliefs.
