Rail transit officials in California’s Bay Area have been ordered to pay more than $7 million to transit workers who were fired because they refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine years ago.
On Oct. 23, a federal jury in the U.S District Court for the Northern District of California sided with six former San Francisco Bay Area Regional Transit (BART) workers who had refused to get the vaccine for religious purposes.
BART was ordered to pay the group more than $7.8 million, with each individual receiving between $1.2 million and $1.5 million apiece, the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the transit workers in the trial, said in a statement on Thursday. The institute, a law firm representing the six former employees since 2022, said the eight-person jury deliberated for two days this week before returning the verdict that awarded the employees the compensation.
About a week ago, the federal jury also determined that BART had failed to prove it suffered an undue hardship by denying accommodations to the ex-employees in the case.
On Oct. 23, the jury further found that the six employees met the burden of showing there was a conflict between their religious beliefs and the BART vaccine mandate, which was implemented in 2021. […]
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