A Tennessee woman has won her lawsuit against Tennessee’s BlueCross BlueShield, securing $700,000 in settlement. The woman sued the company after being fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, which was a requirement for all company employees.
On Monday, July 1, 2024, a federal jury found her refusal of the vaccine was deemed based on religious reasons as genuine. Consequently, the jury awarded Benton a settlement fee of $10,000 in compensatory damage, $177,000 in arrears, and an additional $500,000 in damages.
In November 2022, Tanja Benton was fired from her job as a bio-statistical research scientist at BCBST, a company she had worked with since 2005. According to Benton’s lawsuit filing, her job did not require her to come into frequent contact with people. Consequently, she had refused the vaccine because her religious beliefs were against it.
During the lockdown in 2020 and 2021, Benton did her job from home without any issues until the lockdown was lifted. Benton wrote a special request to the company to plead for her exemption from the company’s vaccination requirement.
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She had given her reasons for this request based on her religious beliefs. Additionally, Benton claimed that she only dealt with 10 to 12 people annually; some of those encounters were online.
However, BCBST refused her request, demanding she comply with the requirement or get fired from her position. When Benton claimed she didn’t communicate, a co-worker responded harshly, suggesting she seek a new job. Eventually, she was fired from her job at the company, which led her to file a federal lawsuit against BCBST.
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According to the lawsuit, Benton refused the vaccine, citing her belief that all COVID-19 vaccines use aborted fetus cell lines. She added that she could not, in good faith, receive the vaccine as it would not defile her body and dishonor God.
The company decided that making the vaccine mandatory was the best course of action at the time. They claimed that by doing so, they were promoting the health and safety of their employees, members, and communities. They also expressed gratitude to all their former employees for the service they rendered to the company.
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On Tuesday, July 2, 2024, Doug Hamiltonian, Benton’s lawyer, disclosed in an interview that Benton is a non-denominational Christian. Project Veritas propagated the claim that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal cells.
Although the claim has proven to be false, the news has caused outrage in the online community, resulting in people exempting themselves from taking it. This was proven by a National Geographic study, which stated that fetal cells were used in the development stage for testing. However, they are not included in the chemical composition of the drug.
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