Chicago City Wire

Liberty Counsel has forwarded a demand letter to NorthShore University HealthSystem on behalf of 14 health care workers and others that the nonprofit litigation organization insists "have been unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate."

In their requests for religious exemption, all 14 of the health care workers that the firm is now representing highlight their sincerely held religious beliefs against abortion and the connection of all available COVID injections to aborted fetal cell lines.

“I write on behalf of the 14 NorthShore employees and numerous others, who are requesting exemption from NorthShore’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy and a reasonable accommodation for their sincerely held religious beliefs, but have been unlawfully denied exemption by NorthShore based on a patently sham and biased process,” Liberty said in its filing.

After initially granting exemptions for some employees, NorthShore changed course based on what company officials said was an “evidence-based criteria” that was never outlined to employees before the changes were made.

“All three of the currently available COVID injections are produced by, derived from, manufactured with, tested on, developed with, or otherwise connected to or associated with aborted fetal cell lines,” the firm added.

According to Liberty, NorthShore also recently moved to change its exemption form to include a warning that all religious objections based on “aborted fetal cell lines, stem cells, tissue or derivative materials will result in denials.”

Illinois law establishes that employees at NorthShore have the fundamental right to determine what medical care they want to have.

“NorthShore University Health System must obey state and federal law and grant reasonable accommodations to its employees whose sincere religious beliefs prohibit them from receiving these COVID shots,” said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver. “NorthShore must also revise its deceptive and unlawful religious exemption form.”

NorthShore recently became one of the latest Chicago-area hospital groups to require all team members be fully vaccinated by Oct. 31. The mandate applies to all of the system’s 18,000 employees, volunteers and contractors at its six hospitals.

“The vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective against COVID-related hospitalization and death,” NorthShore said in a statement. “Requiring COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment is a critical and essential defense against this pandemic.”

Other health systems requiring vaccines for employees include Loyola Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, University of Chicago Medicine, Advocate Aurora Health and Lurie Children’s.