Maine Gov. Janet Mills took revenge on all who refused to relinquish their religious freedom rights during the COVID pandemic by ending their professional careers and preventing them from receiving unemployment benefits. Her vengeance pushed the state into the worst health care crisis it has ever experienced.

Liberty Counsel filed on Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to intervene. Read on to learn more about our latest Supreme Court case and what you can do to help. — Mat

We are headed back to the Supreme Court, but we need YOUR HELP to win. Every donation made to our legal fund today will be DOUBLED IN IMPACT by a generous Challenge Grant.

It was not enough for Gov. Janet Mills to deny health care workers their religious freedom rights over her illegal shot mandates. Mills punished the people she once called “health care heroes,” refusing to allow the unlawfully dismissed employees to receive unemployment benefits.

As a result, Maine is undergoing the worst health care shortage in its history while highly experienced registered nurses are forced to cobble together part-time manual labor jobs just to survive.

The U.S. House is investigating the federal agencies that pushed the mandates and lied about the shots.

Tell Congress: Investigate and hold people accountable!

Jessie Boda has worked as a registered nurse for St. Mary’s Health System’s Psychiatric and Detox facilities since she graduated from college 13 years ago. She was thrilled to use her skills for the Lord, helping people at one of Maine’s premier religious hospitals.

When the shot mandates came down, Jessie submitted a religious exemption request. Jessie would not violate the pro-life tenets of her faith by taking a drug developed using aborted fetal cells.

Jessie never dreamed that a hospital formally affiliated with the Catholic church would deny her request. Yet, that is exactly what St. Mary’s did, and in violating the tenets of their own faith, they also violated Jessie’s Title VII federal right to a religious accommodation.

Worse yet, the hospital fired Jessie in a manner that prevented her from receiving unemployment benefits.

Kevin Palmer, a credentialing coordinator for Southern Maine Health Care (SMHC), found himself in a similar situation. Despite having little to no patient contact, Kevin was ordered to take the COVID jabs or get out.

“I had heart surgery in high school, survived brain cancer in my 20s,” said Kevin, “and now they’re telling me I have to get this shot over a virus with a 99.99 percent survival rate?”

Kevin refused to take the risk, instead filing a religious accommodation request. SMHC promptly denied the request, and like Jessie, was terminated in such a way that he, too, was denied unemployment benefits.

“I ran out of money like everybody else,” Kevin said. “It was crazy. I was trying to apply to jobs, similar to what I had done in credentialing. And I couldn’t even get a job with the experience I had because they were mandating the vaccine even for remote positions. How crazy is that?”

Jessie and Kevin both filed religious discrimination complaints with Maine’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But those, too, were denied.

A crisis of her own creation ...

According to the Maine Department of Labor statistics, the state’s skilled nursing facilities lost nearly 20% of their employees during the pandemic. Maine’s nursing homes alone lost more than 2,800 employees — a staggering loss for a state whose population ranks among the oldest citizenry in the nation.

Maine hospitals and health care providers are now scrambling to fill the shortfall, even sending blanket texts to fired employees asking them to forget the past abuses and to come back to work. Mills was forced to drop her mandate this month when the Court of Appeals ruled in our favor.

But ending the unlawful mandates and pretending unlawful employment actions never happened isn’t enough for the brave health care heroes that Mills and Maine’s health care system abused. These people risked their lives to help others during the worst of the virus, then spent two years in poverty unable to rescue Maine’s aging population from the crisis Mills created.

These health care heroes never received an apology, let alone compensation for the damage Gov. Mills and their former employers unleashed on their careers, their finances, and their lives.

This week, Liberty Counsel filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting the Court rule once and for all that governors and employers cannot violate federal law and discriminate against religion.

We are very much looking forward to holding Gov. Mills and the Maine employers accountable for this terrible and unlawful abuse.

Fund the Supreme Court battle for religious freedom!

Amazingly, COVID jabs continue to be mandated around the country. We have hundreds of pending requests for legal help, and more calls for help come in every day. And now forces in Congress and around the world are pushing for Vaccine Passports that will prevent any unvaccinated person from participating in society.

Tell Congress to DO THEIR JOB and PROTECT OUR RIGHTS! Demand they hold accountable those who stole our freedom, even as they work to ensure that disrespect of our liberty never happens again.

Mat Staver
Founder and  Chairman
Liberty Counsel

P.S. Fax Congress NOW and demand they hold accountable the government agencies and pharmaceutical companies that robbed Americans of both their freedom and their health. You can also sign our petition.

Sources:

“Appeals Court Gives Life to Maine Health Care Workers Case.” Liberty Counsel, May 25, 2023. Lc.org/newsroom/details/052523-appeals-court-gives-life-to-maine-health-care-workers-case.

Robinson, Steve. “Maine Hospital That Fired Unvaccinated Nurses over Mills’ Mandate Is Begging Them to Return Two Years Later.” The Maine Wire, August 9, 2023. Themainewire.com/2023/08/maine-hospital-that-fired-unvaccinated-nurses-over-mills-mandate-is-begging-them-to-return-two-years-later/.