Supreme Court Rules Refusal to Take Vaccinations Not Protected Under Constitution

The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a former AstraZeneca sales manager who was denied unemployment benefits after the vaccine maker fired her for declining on religious grounds to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

The British–Swedish company AstraZeneca makes the Oxford–AstraZeneca SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which is marketed under the names Covishield and Vaxzevria. The company also makes Esomeprazole, which is sold as Nexium, a medication that treats gastroesophageal reflux disease.

The company experienced adverse publicity in the West a year ago when AstraZeneca’s Chinese division president, Wang Lei, said the company aims to be a “patriotic” company in China that “loves the Communist Party.”

The nation’s highest court refused to grant the petition for certiorari, or review, in Goede v. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP in an unsigned order on April 1. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision. The justices had considered the petition at their private conferences on Feb. 16 and March 28. For a petition to advance to the oral arguments stage, at least four of the nine justices must vote in favor of granting it.

The ruling leaves in place a June 2023 decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which upheld the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s determination that Tina Goede’s refusal of the vaccine was “employment misconduct” that rendered her ineligible for unemployment benefits. The state appeals court decision was affirmed by the Minnesota Supreme Court in September 2023.

Ms. Goede filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Dec. 18, 2023, stating that AstraZeneca fired her “because it refused to accommodate her sincerely held religious beliefs, and she refused to compromise those beliefs by taking a COVID-19 vaccine which she believes was developed using aborted fetal cells … and which she also believes is harmful to her body, which she believes is a ‘temple of the Holy Spirit.’”

She considers herself a pro-life Catholic who believes that “abortion is the murder of an unborn child, and, therefore, she cannot, in good conscience, receive a medical intervention tested on or developed using cell lines from an aborted fetus without being complicit in sin.”

Ms. Goede said she has retained these beliefs for 20 years. For 10 years, “she has researched medical interventions she considers receiving and routinely verifies whether they involve materials derived from abortion before receiving them.”

She stopped taking over-the-counter painkillers a decade ago because she came to believe that “they were tested on cell lines from an aborted fetus.” She testified that “she would only ever use a substance tested on or derived from aborted fetal-cell lines to prevent her death,” the petition states.