Appeals Court Revives Nurse’s COVID-19 Vaccine Lawsuit

A legal case brought by a nurse in Minnesota over her refusal to receive a COVID-19 vaccine will move forward under a June 15 decision from a federal appeals court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said that the nurse’s employer, the nonprofit CentraCare Health System, was wrong about its COVID-19 vaccine mandate being an essential policy.

“Vaccination is not the desired result. It is a means to an end—creating a safer workplace environment for both patients and coworkers,” Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson wrote for the unanimous panel that ruled in favor of nurse Christine Klimek.

The issue is whether Klimek’s job involved in-person patient care, and she has offered evidence that she was working remotely from home at the time on the electronic preparation of documents.

CentraCare lawyers said the nonprofit denied Klimek’s vaccine mandate exemption request due to a chronic condition called regional sympathetic dystrophy because she might be called in at any time, but Klimek’s job description does not indicate that is the case, Erickson said.

“CentraCare has also failed to adequately show any negative consequences of not requiring Klimek to perform in-person patient care,” the opinion stated. “When this is considered alongside the evidence that Klimek spent no time performing in-person work, the evidence weighs against a finding patient care was an essential job function. Under these circumstances, Klimek presented sufficient evidence to show she was a qualified individual.”

CentraCare placed Klimek on unpaid leave in December 2021. She filed a lawsuit about a year later, alleging CentraCare failed to accommodate her disability, as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Klimek had previously received an exemption from receiving a vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella due to her chronic condition, after a doctor said that vaccination could trigger the condition and that the risks of the vaccine seemed to outweigh the benefits for her.

The ruling sends the case back to U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino in Minnesota. Provinzino in 2025 concluded that Klimek’s condition did not qualify as a disability, meaning her motion for judgment against CentraCare must be denied.

The appeals court said it must, at this stage of the case, view the evidence in the most favorable light to Klimek, and that, at this stage, at least, that means treating Klimek’s condition as a disability.

“When an employee’s health care provider recommends that the employee not take the COVID-19 vaccine due to their health condition and the employee works 100% remotely, away from patients and staff, the employer cannot summarily terminate the employee. This case we now expect will be headed to a jury trial in federal court,” Andrew D. Parker, an attorney with Parker Daniels Kibort who is representing Klimek, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“The COVID-19 pandemic sadly resulted in the death of many. It also resulted in the destruction of many careers due to the knee-jerk blanket employment decisions of overzealous employers.”

A lawyer representing CentraCare did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.