Judge takes side of unvaccinated students
School, for now, not able to enforce requirements
Maricopa Community Colleges cannot, for now, enforce its vaccine requirements for two nursing students who sued the district, a federal judge ruled.
Emily Thoms and Kamaleilani Moreno claimed the community college district was violating their free exercise of religion by not helping them complete their clinical rotations required for graduation. The students have declined to get vaccinated for religious reasons, and their rotations were scheduled at partner sites that require vaccination.
U.S. District Judge Steven Logan granted their preliminary injunction request, but the case will still continue.
For now, the district has to accommodate the students so they can fulfill the clinical parts of their coursework and graduate from the Mesa Community College nursing program as scheduled in December, according to the judge.
Both students said they felt relieved by that, even though they don’t yet know the details of what the district will do.
The students had been assigned to a few days of clinical shifts at Mayo Clinic starting this week and later this month. Before the judge’s order, that posed a problem, because Mayo requires vaccinations and does not allow for religious exemptions, according to the district.
Maricopa Community Colleges require students to satisfy the vaccination policies of the clinical partners they may work with because they have to complete in-person clinicals to finish their academic requirements.
The district argued in court that it couldn’t easily switch the students or accommodate virtual simulated clinical shifts, but it appears it may now have to. The district also could appeal the ruling.
The judge’s order just answers the students’ request for emergency relief, said Colleen Auer, the students’ attorney. But it largely addresses the broader complaint, too, since all that needed to be resolved for the students to graduate on time was the issue of the upcoming in-person clinicals, she said.
“The impact to these individual students is tremendous and this will give them their futures back, their educational and professional futures back, and there’s just no way to underscore what an incredible gift that is to these students,” Auer said.
Both students are getting their associate degrees in applied science in nursing, which makes them eligible to then apply for a registered nurse license. Both said they plan to work for places that do not require the COVID-19 vaccine. Most big hospital systems have vaccine mandates.
District officials are “carefully evaluating Judge Logan’s ruling and considering our options,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
“The Maricopa Community Colleges remain committed to providing highquality nursing education to all of our students and will continue to work with them in a way that supports their religious beliefs, values, and personal circumstances.” religious beliefs to complete their clinicals and graduate as expected on December 17, 2021, or on the other, adhering to their beliefs and giving up the nursing degrees to which they are otherwise entitled and all their associated benefits for the indefinite future.”
The judge’s order means Thoms and Moreno should be able to complete some sort of clinical alternative that lets them graduate on time.
Before, college officials had offered them the option to finish the academic portion this fall, withdraw from the clinical portion and then complete that in the spring semester if clinical spots were available at facilities not requiring vaccinations or offering religious exemptions. Lawyers for the community college district argued it would just be a delay in getting their degrees, not the “irreparable harm” needed to prove their case.
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, the district argued.
The judge decided that given changing vaccination policies at clinical facilities, spring placements wouldn’t be a guarantee.
“It is difficult to characterize these circumstances as a mere delay when there is no clear end date when Plaintiffs will be able to graduate,” Logan wrote.
And, he said, it’s not just about a delay in their education, “but the likely violation of their constitutional and fundamental rights, which is without question an irreparable harm.”
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.
Moreno said the judge’s decision came as a relief. She was driving to northern Arizona with her husband and kids when she learned the news and said they had to pull over to celebrate.
“This whole semester has been so stressful. It’s honestly been hard to concentrate on anything — trying to study for tests and doing homework assignments, even just going about my day-today life — knowing that all of that could have been for nothing,” she said.
Thoms said it’s been “one challenge after the next,” like a “roller coaster” since the semester began.
“Imagine we’re about to cross the finish line, we’re running, we’re at the very end of the race, and then to be told the rules have changed and you’re no longer going to win anymore ... by graduating,” she said.
“Our future and the money that we’ve paid, all of it is so uncertain, so it was really exhausting, losing sleep, trying to study, and trying to be able to complete our coursework and trying to be a mother and a wife ... It was really awful.”
Although an increasing number of hospitals, nursing homes and other health care settings require COVID-19 vaccinations for staff, both Thoms and Moreno said they will work at places that do not mandate the vaccine.
Thoms plans to do community health education at a nonprofit; Moreno plans to work in the area of aesthetic nursing doing procedures like Botox and injectables, plus part-time hospital work.
“There are other jobs out there that don’t require the vaccine and they aren’t the hospital setting,” Moreno said. “There’s definitely jobs out there for nurses that aren’t the big companies that we see.”
District officials had argued 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.
Logan recognized that, writing that the case is not about a government’s vaccine mandate, but rather a “set of educational and administrative policies” that “likely violate” the students’ right to free exercise of religion.
Maricopa Community Colleges can adjust its policy so as not to “substantially burden” the students’ religious beliefs, he said. The burden of the college making academic alternatives to in-person clinicals doesn’t outweigh the burden its policy likely puts on students’ religion, he said.
It’s unclear what the district will do. A spokesperson would not comment further. Moreno and Thoms said they hadn’t heard anything from their school yet about accommodations.
Options offered by the students’ lawyer include providing simulated clinicals or extra assignments, coordinating clinicals for them at sites without vaccination requirements or switching their assignments with other students.
Testimony from students and administrators revealed that nursing program officials already had made some accommodations to its policy at least twice this semester to help other students for non-religious reasons.
“(The students’) case is not doubtful, and the harm they have alleged — the violation of their constitutional and fundamental right to free exercise — is an injury of the highest order under the Constitution and the law,” Logan wrote.
Logan’s ruling was just on the request for a preliminary injunction, the emergency relief for which the students had asked. The case is expected to continue, and more evidence could be presented and this order could be challenged.
Nothing had been filed since the judge’s Friday order, according to a Monday afternoon check of the court docket.
Auer, the students’ attorney, said the big question has been addressed and the students got the relief they were looking for to fulfill some sort of clinical experience and graduate on time in December.
“It’s thrown people’s lives into disarray and their futures into question, so this gives them the certainty they’ve been hoping for such a long time, for months now,” she said.
The relief will just apply to the two students who sued, even though there are others in similar situations. But Auer believes the district may need to reevaluate its vaccination policy more broadly.
“It (the judge’s order) has wider implications, in my opinion than just these two plaintiffs,” she said. “It is discussing a course of conduct that is not consistent with the applicable First Amendment and state law on free exercise rights, so the district is going to have to evaluate its policy.”