An Arizona public school district faces a lawsuit following its decision to demote buildings manager William Bishop to substitute teacher for his refusal to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Cartwright School District in Phoenix is being sued for its “refusal to grant—in fact, its refusal to even respond to—Mr. Bishop’s request for an accommodation that would allow him to honor his religious convictions that prevent him from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine,” Bishop’s attorney, Rebecca Dummermuth, told Superintendent Dr. LeeAnn Aguilar-Lawlor in a Sept. 9 letter made available to The Epoch Times.
Dummermuth is an attorney with the First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment and religious freedom issues.
Dummermuth said in the letter that the school district’s refusal came “despite the fact that 95 percent [of] district staff were carved out of its vaccine mandate. The district’s refusal to accommodate Mr. Bishop’s sincerely held religious beliefs, and its adverse employment action of transferring and demoting him to a position as substitute teacher, violate of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Arizona Free Exercise of Religion Act, and executive orders by [Arizona] Governor [Doug] Ducey.”
A spokesman for the school district told The Epoch Times that Aguilar-Lawlor was unavailable to comment on the First Liberty letter due to a bereavement. The superintendent will return to the office next week.
Bishop’s demotion comes as President Joe Biden warned the estimated 80 million Americans who haven’t yet been vaccinated that “we have been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
But Biden’s announcement almost immediately sparked new protests from an already surging public resistance, with at least 19 governors and two attorneys general issuing statements disagreeing with Biden’s decision and vowing to defy it.
The defiant governors, all Republicans, include Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey, as well as those of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
Many of those declining to be vaccinated cite religious grounds for doing so, including Bishop, according to Dummermuth.
“As a Christian, he believes that his body is a temple of God (I Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19), and therefore he has a God-given responsibility to protect the physical integrity of his body and not to defile it (I Corinthians 8:7; II Corinthians 7:1),” she said in her letter to Aguilar-Lawlor.
“Additionally, he believes that human life begins at conception, and he staunchly opposes abortion. Therefore, receiving a vaccine that has been developed using aborted fetal cell lines would violate his conscience.”
The health care industry appears to be especially hard-hit by the growing resistance to vaccine mandates, with severe staffing shortages in multiple states, according to Liberty Counsel (LC).
The Florida-based LC, like First Liberty, is a public interest law firm that specializes in civil liberties issues, especially those involving religious freedom.
“In Texas, weeks after 150 hospital workers were fired by Houston Methodist, one of several hospitals struggling has reached a breaking point amid the COVID-19 outbreak.”
The statement quoted a California physician, Dr. Tom Sugarman, who said, “Oftentimes at hospitals, there are long waits and long delays. There’s not enough staff to keep beds open, and patients can languish waiting.”
Sugarman is an emergency physician and senior director of government affairs at Vituity, a physicians and medical services group.
In addition to clients in the health care industry, LC is representing hundreds of Department of Veterans Affairs employees who are seeking exemptions from Biden’s vaccine mandate for government workers, issued in August.
