Aurora, CO - Thomas More Society is pleased to announce that, after more than a year of settlement negotiations, following a landmark decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2024, the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine has agreed to pay more than $10.3 million in damages, tuition, and attorney’s fees to 18 plaintiffs who were denied religious accommodations to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. The settlement ends nearly a half-decade of litigation in federal and state court and represents a historic victory for religious freedom nationwide.  

The result is one of the only in the country in which plaintiffs recovered money damages under the First Amendment for a challenge to a government COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Government officials, including defendant Chancellor Donald Elliman, are generally protected by “qualified immunity.” However, after the Tenth Circuit ruled the actions of Chancellor Elliman and other defendants violated the plaintiffs’ “clearly established” First Amendment rights, the University agreed to pay damages under the First Amendment to all plaintiffs. The plaintiffs, who sued anonymously, included former and current employees and students, including physicians, medical students, nurses, medical professionals, and administrative and operations staff.  

Going forward, the University has agreed to allow students to request religious accommodations on equal terms as employees and to give the same consideration to requests for religious exemptions as are given for medical exemptions, contrary to the University’s actions in this case. In addition, it has agreed to refrain from future inquisitions into the supposed legitimacy of students’ and employees’ religious beliefs, after initially denying all requests for religious exemption to COVID-19 vaccination on that pretense.  

“No amount of compensation or course-correction can make up for the life-altering damage Chancellor Elliman and Anschutz inflicted on the plaintiffs and so many others throughout this case, who felt forced to succumb to a manifestly irrational mandate,” said Michael McHale, senior counsel at Thomas More Society. “At great, and sometimes career-ending, costs, our heroic clients fought for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans who were put to the unconscionable choice of their livelihoods or their faith during what Justice Gorsuch has rightly declared one of ‘the greatest intrusion[s] on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.’ We are confident our clients’ long-overdue victory indeed confirms, despite the tyrannical efforts of many, that our shared constitutional right to religious liberty endures.”  

The Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the University’s widespread denial of religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination was “motivated by religious animus.” The University had initially denied all religious exemptions via a terse email from an anonymous “Vaccine Verify” committee concluding that requesters failed to present a “religious belief whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations.” Although the University attempted to amend its policy in the face of judicial review, the Tenth Circuit held the University’s transparent litigation posturing, and continuing First Amendment violations in the amended policy, failed to moot plaintiffs’ claims.  

“The men and women at the heart of this case are true heroes,” said Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society. “They stood up, at great personal cost, to an injustice that never should have been inflicted on them—or on any American. These are kind, compassionate medical professionals who entered their field to serve and care for others, yet they were treated with shocking disregard for their rights and scoffed at for their deeply held beliefs. Because they had the courage to say ‘no’ when their religious freedoms were trampled, people of faith across the country now enjoy stronger protections. They deserve every bit of justice they’ve received in this case—and more.”

Thomas More Society attorneys filed the initial federal lawsuit in September 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado against the University of Colorado, the chancellor of the Anschutz School of Medicine, and the school’s senior associate dean of medical education. The original lawsuit was filed for a Catholic doctor and a Buddhist medical student, who were unable to take the vaccine due to their deeply held religious convictions. In October 2021, more than a dozen additional staff and students were added to the lawsuit.  

As part of the settlement, the University agreed to pay $1 million in attorney fees.

“Nobody should be coerced into choosing between their faith and their livelihoods, as I and so many others at CU Anschutz were forced to do at the whim of ideological bureaucrats,” said Plaintiff Madison Gould, who sued under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 9.” “CU’s total disregard for our careers and livelihoods gutted the years of study and self-sacrifice poured out by so many in pursuit of serving the weakest among us. None of that mattered to the University.”

“God bless the lawyers at the Thomas More Society who worked tirelessly to see this case through to the end. We’re forever grateful to them for standing by us when no one else would and for journeying with us for nearly a half-decade to this case’s ultimate and successful conclusion. May our nation never witness anything like this travesty again.”