A Democrat-infested court in Illinois officially denied the religious freedom of the state’s citizens by confirming that they must comply with COVID mandates or face being fired from their jobs.
On Oct. 12, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court ruled that the state’s conscience rules did not apply to Christians who opposed the Vax because the Democrats rushed to rewrite the law to specifically exclude conscience as a reason to avoid the Vax.
The Democrats, of course, have a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature and also hold every top office of state government. So, they can pretty much do whatever they want. And they want to take all rights away from Christians.
The lawsuit the court ruled on was filed by Laura Lenz, fired from her job in 2021 at Advocate Christ Medical Center in suburban Oak Lawn. Lenz refused to take the jab, citing her religious beliefs. And she, among others, filed lawsuits.
Some of the lawsuits charged that the companies violated their body autonomy, but others also focused on the conscience laws that once prevented employers and government officials from discriminating against “any person” in Illinois “in any manner” over that person’s “conscientious refusal to receive obtain, accept, perform … any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.”
But the state’s conscience law is no longer what it once was.
According to the Cook County Record:
In response to those legal claims, Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly moved swiftly in 2021 to amend the law, adding a provision known as Section 13.5, to specifically exclude any mandates related to the goal of preventing the spread of Covid-19. This by definition included Covid vaccine mandates, as the state has continued to maintain that the vaccines prevent the spread of the virus.
In enacting the legislation, however, Pritzker and his allies claimed they were not changing the law, only issuing a “declaration of existing law,” in a bid to tell courts the state never believed the law could be used to allow people to refuse mandatory vaccines and to allow the bill to take effect immediately.
The Democrats also played games with these new rules, and courts have been their willing cohorts in taking away freedom.
In a split decision last year, for instance, the Illinois Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield agreed that the changes to the law should allow Pritzker to enact executive Covid vaccine mandates for a host of state and other local government employees.
And in the case brought by Lenz against Advocate, the First District Appellate justices also pointed to the changes to the Conscience Act to allow private employers to also fire workers who refuse to comply with Covid vaccine mandates, unless the company agreed to recognize a request for religious exemption.
They noted the law specifically carved out all medical treatments or procedures related to Covid-19, so long as they were intended to prevent the spread of the virus.
The court agreed with the Democrats and their bastardization of the conscience law and to take away freedoms, naturally.
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Cross-Posted With iPatriot
