By Michael Karlik | Colorado Politics
In a fiery opinion on Tuesday, the federal appeals court based in Denver tore into a pair of COVID-19 vaccination policies the University of Colorado imposed on medical staff in late 2021, concluding they discriminated against certain religions and affected plaintiffs were consequently entitled to exemptions.
By 2-1, the all-Republican panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit directed unusually sharp barbs at each other and at the trial judge who initially declined to block the university’s mandates. Judge Allison H. Eid, writing for the majority, believed the policies governing religious exemptions at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus were “permeated with animus.”
CU “has not even attempted to explain why its interest is served by granting exemptions to practitioners of some religions, but not others. No one contends that Christian Scientists are any less likely to contract or to spread COVID-19 than Buddhists or Roman Catholics or Orthodox Christians,” wrote Eid, an appointee of Donald Trump. “But because (plaintiffs) were the wrong religions, their exemptions were denied.”