The University of Colorado Anschutz will pay more than $10 million to settle a lawsuit brought by students and staff who sued in 2021 after being denied religious exemptions to the campus’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, according to a group that represented the plaintiffs.
CU Anschutz has also agreed to make policy changes, the Thomas More Society announced Monday. The group, which represents plaintiffs in religious liberty cases nationwide, called it one of the only cases in the country where plaintiffs have received money damages in a lawsuit over a COVID vaccination mandate.
The case involved 18 plaintiffs, whom Peter Breen, the Thomas More Society’s executive vice president and head of litigation, called heroes.
“They stood up, at great personal cost, to an injustice that never should have been inflicted on them — or on any American,” Breen said in a statement. “Because they had the courage to say ‘no’ when their religious freedoms were trampled, people of faith across the country now enjoy stronger protections.”
In a statement released Monday, CU Anschutz, which is home to the University of Colorado School of Medicine as well as UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and several other major medical and research facilities, stood by its decision to issue a vaccine mandate.
“This policy was grounded in science, public health guidance, and our obligation to safeguard lives during an unprecedented global crisis,” the university statement read. “While some chose to challenge the policy, the evidence remains clear: vaccination was essential to protecting the vulnerable, keeping hospitals open, and sustaining education and research.”
Details of the settlement
The settlement agreement was not released. A court document filed Monday said both sides sought to dismiss the case “according to the agreement of the parties,” but contained no other details.
According to the Thomas More Society, CU Anschutz agreed to pay more than $10.3 million in damages, tuition and attorneys’ fees. The society specified that $1 million from the settlement would go toward attorneys’ fees, but did not provide a breakdown of the other portions.
The university also agreed to treat students’ requests for vaccine exemptions the same as it would treat requests from employees and to treat requests for religious exemptions the same as it would treat requests for medical exemptions, according to the society.
The university has also agreed to “refrain from future inquisitions into the supposed legitimacy of students’ and employees’ religious beliefs,” the society said in its announcement.
CU Anschutz no longer has a general COVID vaccination mandate in place for staff or students.
A four-year legal fight
The case dates to the early days after COVID vaccination became widely available, as state officials and health systems looked to vaccine mandates to control a deadly surge of the virus due to the newly arrived delta variant.
The plaintiffs — the number of which grew over time and included both faculty members and students — alleged the university unconstitutionally denied their requests for religious exemptions. Some of the plaintiffs said they opposed vaccination generally on religious grounds, while others specifically cited religious objections to using vaccines developed or tested using cell lines originally derived from aborted fetuses.
The university responded to the lawsuit by stressing the importance of vaccination to protect the patients that campus doctors and medical students cared for and by also noting that some of the plaintiffs’ objections did not line up with statements on COVID vaccination by leaders of their faiths. For instance, while one doctor who sued the university cited her Catholic faith in her exemption request, the pope had spoken in favor of vaccination.
To plaintiffs, this reasoning amounted to an unconstitutional inquisition into their religious beliefs.
“We are confident our clients’ long-overdue victory indeed confirms, despite the tyrannical efforts of many, that our shared constitutional right to religious liberty endures,” Michael McHale, senior counsel at Thomas More Society, said in a statement.
In its statement, CU Anschutz said it remains “deeply grateful to the health care professionals, faculty, staff and students whose courage and commitment protected our community and advanced our mission when it mattered most.”
A federal trial court judge in Denver denied the plaintiffs’ injunction requests in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In 2024, though, a three judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed those decisions, finding that the university’s policies were “motivated by religious animus.” The trial court judge, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore, was appointed by a Democratic president, former President Barack Obama, while all three judges on the 10th CIrcuit panel were appointed by Republican presidents.
The case entered mediation after the appellate court’s ruling, leading to Monday’s settlement.