San Francisco Bay rail authority pays $7 million to workers it fired for failing to get covid-19 vaccine

In 2021, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) imposed a mandatory covid-19 vaccination rule for all its employees. Six of them refused to receive a dose and for that reason were fired from the publicly owned company. Now, the courts are forcing BART to compensate them with more than $1 million each.

A federal jury in the Northern District Court of California ruled that the workers who refused to receive the vaccine on religious grounds were right in their litigation against the transport company. The compensation order became final this month.

In total, BART is required to pay $7.8 million. Jury deliberation went on for eight days before making this order. At one point, the plaintiffs were asking for lost wages to date following the termination. The jury then added $1 million to each of those figures. Some of the laid-off workers have been with the transport company for more than 30 years.

For the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the plaintiffs in their legal battle, "the sincerity and depth" of the employees' religious convictions, which led to their terminations, was one of the pillars that led them to win their lawsuit against the regional carrier.

BART alleged that some of the plaintiffs did not refuse the vaccine for religious reasons, but the jury did not heed these arguments.

The litigation between the workers and the company began in 2021, after the height of the pandemic, when BART's top management, run by locally elected officials, approved a blanket vaccination rule for the workforce.

That rule provided for religious exemptions. However, when the company received 188 requests for vaccination exemptions, management denied them to 40 employees, who were forced to get vaccinated or face termination of employment. It was this decision that ultimately triggered the start of the court battle.