BUZZ
DOJ says lower court ‘summarily and improperly second guessed the sincerity’ of coach’s religious beliefs
The Washington State University football coach terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic has received the backing of the U.S. Department of Justice and is appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Nick Rolovich was fired from his position in October 2021 following Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s institution of a vaccine mandate. The following year, Rolovich filed a $25 million lawsuit after an administrative appeal was denied.
At the time, Rolovich held the highest paid public position in the state at $3.2 million per year, and had three remaining seasons on his contract.
Last year, a federal judge sided with the university, saying Rolovich “failed to provide sufficient evidence of a religious objection” to the COVID shot.
Judge Thomas Rice wrote “In the thousands of pages of discovery, [Rolovich] does not invoke a religious objection to the vaccine. This alone is a basis for denying [his] claimed religious objection.”
But this past week, EWTN News reports Rolovich and his lawyers from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appealed to the Ninth Circuit, complete with the support of the Justice Department, arguing Rolovich “had provided ‘voluminous … evidence where he asserted, and demonstrated evidence of, a sincere religious belief.’”
In its amicus brief, the DOJ said “the district court summarily and improperly second guessed the sincerity of Rolovich’s religious beliefs by focusing only on his secular reasons for not taking the vaccine.”
The DOJ noted the coach provided to WSU a religious exemption form that, among other things, noted “as a ‘baptized Catholic,’ he is ‘compelled’ to decline COVID-19 vaccination ‘by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.’”
The Ninth Circuit “should reverse the district court’s ruling that the record fails to support a prima facie case for Rolovich’s Title VII religious accommodation claim,” the DOJ concluded.
Becket Fund Senior Attorney Joseph Davis said in a statement “Sidelining a coach for standing by his faith betrays the spirit of college athletics and religious freedom. The Ninth Circuit should throw the flag on WSU’s unnecessary roughness and protect every American’s right to live and work according to their faith.”
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