Two Maricopa Community College District nursing students are suing in federal court to prevent the District from enforcing, threatening to enforce, or attempting to enforce the District’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for its nursing and allied health students.
The students, Emily Thoms and Kamaleilani Moreno, through their attorney Colleen Auer, allege that the District is failing to make accommodations for these students’ deeply held religious beliefs.
United States District Judge Steven Paul Logan was quick to set a hearing for November 1.
Auer is asking the Court to require the District to adopt a “suitable accommodation” that will allow her clients to “complete their academic programs on time and as scheduled and contracted-for.”
“Two young and upcoming college students with a brilliant future in healthcare ahead of them have been told by the Maricopa County Community College District that they will either sacrifice their religious convictions against inoculation with the COVID-19 vaccines or their academic programs,” Auer told the Arizona Daily Independent. “The reason for this Hobson’s Choice turns on the fact that these young students happen to have been assigned to a 3-day clinical rotation with one of the District’s Clinical Partners who has a universal COVID-19 vaccination requirement for students doing rotations in its facilities. Many other Clinical Partners of the District allow students to decline or obtain an exemption to COVID-19 vaccination provided they comply with established COVID-19 safety protocols for the facility, which these students are more than willing to do.”
“Rather than accommodate the sincere religious beliefs of these students by affording them an alternative clinical placement, substituting simulated clinical experiences in lieu of the in-person clinical or providing a combination of the two, among other available reasonable accommodations, the District has elected, instead, to force these students to choose between their religious beliefs and their educational futures,” continued Auer. “That offends the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and is the reason for this lawsuit.”
In the case, the students allege:
“[T]he District’s administrative regulation, promulgated on or about August 25, 2021, and amended on or about September 16, 2021, which requires all District Nursing and Allied Health students (the ”N&AH Students”) assigned to a Fall 2021 clinical rotation with a clinical partner who requires universal COVID-19 vaccination for clinical placements, to forfeit their sincere religious beliefs and get vaccinated before the start of said rotation or exercise their sincere religious beliefs opposing vaccination and be removed from their academic programs at the start of said rotation (the “Vaccine Mandate”). Plaintiffs have moved this Court for temporary and preliminary injunctive relief in view of the following:
Efforts by Plaintiffs’ counsel to secure a reasonable accommodation for Plaintiffs from the District ended unsuccessfully on October 14, 2021; and,
Plaintiffs are subject to the Vaccine Mandate for their Fall 2021 clinical rotations commencing on November 8, 2021, at which time:
● the District will withhold further contracted-for educational services from Plaintiffs commencing on November 8, 2021;
● the District will remove Plaintiffs from their nursing programs resulting in a failure (or an incomplete) for their fourth and final semester of those programs; and,
● the District will deny Plaintiffs the balance of their contracted-for educational services and the resultant Associate in Applied Science in Nursing Degrees anticipated December 17, 2021.
While Judge Logan denied the temporary restraining order request, he ordered the District’s lawyers to respond to the lawsuit by October 26, with the students’ reply to the District’s response due October 28.
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