By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived part of a lawsuit accusing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of illegally firing two longtime employees who claimed religious objections against COVID-19 vaccinations.
In a 3-0 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found disputed issues over the sincerity of Jeanette Diaz’s religious opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, and said the New York Fed’s contrary evidence “at best” challenged her credibility.
The Manhattan-based court also upheld the dismissal of claims by a second plaintiff, Lori Gardner-Alfred. It returned Diaz’s case to U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, who dismissed the case in September 2023.
Steven Warshawsky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, had no immediate comment. The New York Fed declined to comment.
Diaz, of Bayonne, New Jersey, and Gardner-Alfred, of the Bronx, New York, were senior executive specialists with a respective 27 years and 35 years of experience at the New York Fed before being fired in March 2022 for refusing vaccinations.
Diaz said she believed vaccines were made with aborted fetal cells, and inconsistent with teachings of the Catholic Church.
She also raised non-religious concerns, once sending a meme to Gardner-Alfred where the letters in COVID-19 variants “Delta” and “Omicron” were anagrammed to “Media Control.”
Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch said a reasonable jury could infer from the evidence that Diaz was either hiding her secular agenda behind a “veil of religious doctrine,” or raising sincerely held religious objections.
“What matters is that she believed that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine would be inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church,” the judge wrote.
Lynch also said Liman’s dismissal appeared to rely too heavily on scientific evidence that COVID-19 vaccines were not made with and did not contain aborted fetal cells.
Gardner-Alfred said she opposed “invasive” vaccines as a member of the Temple of Healing Spirit.
The appeals court found evidence of her alleged religious beliefs “wholly contradictory,” incomplete and not credible.
The case is Gardner-Alfred et al v Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 23-7544.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New YorkEditing by Bill Berkrot)
