2 nursing students sue over MCCCD vaccine requirement

Two nursing students are suing Maricopa Community Colleges over a requirement they get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Emily Thoms and Kamaleilani Moreno claim the community college district is violating their free exercise of religion by not helping them to graduate as scheduled or providing preferred accommodations since they are refusing to get vaccinated for religious reasons.

Both students are getting their associate degrees in applied science in nursing, which makes them eligible to then apply for a registered nurse license.

A federal judge heard arguments from both sides during a three-hour hearing Monday and is expected to rule this week on the students’ request the court bar the district from enforcing a vaccine requirement.

Maricopa County Community College District, which graduates about 1,000 nurses a year, requires its students meet the strictest safety procedures of the clinical partners with whom they could be randomly matched.

Some clinical partners are mandating vaccinations for anyone who works in their facilities.

District officials argue the school itself does not have a vaccine mandate, but that students have to participate in hands-on medical rotations at places that may have vaccine requirements.

This has become the sticking point between students declining the vaccine on religious grounds and the district saying it’s unable to switch their sites or allow online clinicals, meaning some can’t finish out their semester as scheduled.

Attorneys for the district told the judge there’s no “irreparable harm” — no one is being forced to get vaccinated, kicked out of school or given a failing grade, but rather, at most, some will be slightly delayed in finishing the clinical part of their nursing program.

But the students are not satisfied.

“These students at every turn were given either no information, misinformation, threats, warnings, concerns about an F (failure) versus an I (incomplete), uncertainty about ever being able to get into clinicals,” their attorney Colleen Auer said during the hearing. “There are so many easy solutions available to the district to give these students what they paid for, what they deserve and what they’ve relied on for their future.”

U.S. District Judge Steven Logan asked questions of attorneys from both sides and was expected to rule on the matter in the coming days.

Issue over clinical placements

Margi Schultz, director of the nursing program, testified that students who choose to withdraw are offered tuition refunds, or they can take an incomplete on the clinical portion and complete the rest of the semester, take the final exam and get their grade after finishing the clinical part during a future semester.

The idea is that these students might be able to get matched with clinical partners that don’t require the vaccine or that allow religious exemptions next semester, but that it’s too late and difficult to make those changes this semester, according to the district.

While the students suing asked for simulated clinical options, simulated clinic is not a good replacement for in-person experiences with real patients, district officials argued.

“It is our responsibility to provide these students hands-on clinical so that they are competent when they graduate,” Schultz said. “There is no replacement for in-person, hands-on live clinical experience.”

Thoms and Moreno are Christian and are opposed to the vaccines because they used “aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development or production,” according to the lawsuit.

Auer said students who are “unlucky souls” — matched with clinical providers that don’t allow vaccine exemptions — are facing the choice of sacrificing their religious beliefs or academic plans.

Both students are in their fourth and final semesters of the nursing program at Mesa Community College. They were randomly assigned to a few shifts at Mayo Clinic, which Maricopa Community Colleges says does not allow for religious exemptions.

Thoms and Moreno submitted accommodation forms with the district, but administrators told them they could not make accommodations to allow them to finish the clinical requirements without “undue hardship” on the district.

The district also could not switch them to clinical locations that do not require vaccinations or that could give them a religious accommodation. Clinical placements have been limited this year because of the ongoing pandemic, with fewer facilities participating and a 15% reduction in spots for Maricopa Community Colleges nursing students from prior years, per the district.

“The fact that they want to not allow me to continue my education when I only have three clinical shifts left is just detrimental to me,” Moreno said during the hearing.

Auer said the district is depriving students of their educational rights and the program they paid for, worked for and expected to graduate from in December. It’s a “big if” whether clinical spots will be available for these students next semester, she said.

But attorneys for Maricopa Community Colleges argued that the students’ real grievance is with the vaccination requirements adopted by clinical partners, as the district itself has no vaccine mandate.

Departures from nursing program

Thoms and Moreno are still in the nursing program, but a handful of other students have already withdrawn.

As of Oct. 19, 31 nursing students had left the program because of the vaccine requirement from clinical partners, administrators told the district’s governing board at a work session meeting.

Sylvia Glynn, brought by Auer to testify, was in her last semester of the nursing program but quit after the requirement she get vaccinated. She, too, opposed the vaccine on religious grounds.

“I’ve had to put my whole life on hold,” Glynn said, explaining how withdrawing from the program has impacted her financial, family and life plans.

Another student, Claire Bellam, said she has months of in-person experience in hospitals, including in COVID-19 units, but is now stuck with four clinical shifts she may not be able to do, having applied for a religious accommodation to Mayo Clinic’s vaccine mandate and gotten denied.

“These students are customers of a school, they paid for a service, they paid for an educational program, and they paid dearly for that program,” Auer said.

“They complied with their end of the bargain, they fulfilled all the academic requirements, and the school as the service provider, their job is to help these students get through their programs and graduate on time.”

Maricopa Community Colleges’ attorneys told the judge Auer did not meet the high bar needed for injunctive relief from a court, and that the students are not facing “irreparable injury” if they have to delay their clinical sessions by a few months.

“These students at every turn were given either no information, misinformation, threats, warnings, concerns about an F (failure) versus an I (incomplete), uncertainty about ever being able to get into clinicals ... There are so many easy solutions available to the district to give these students what they paid for, what they deserve and what they’ve relied on for their future.”

Colleen Auer Students’ lawyer