(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Nursing student sues school after being denied a COVID-19 vaccination exemption [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- July']
Date: 2022-07-25
A former nursing student is suing a western Iowa university over its insistence that he be vaccinated against COVID-19 before taking part in clinical work at Iowa hospitals.
Court records indicate that Andrew Perry of Kansas, an undergraduate student at Sioux Center’s Dordt University, was a junior during the 2021-22 school year at the school. Until this spring, he was pursuing a nursing degree at Dordt with the goal of becoming a registered nurse.
His academic program required him to spend much of his junior year in clinical rotations at area hospitals, attending to actual patients and providing care under the supervision of Dordt faculty and the hospitals’ doctors and nurses.
In late 2021, the federal government imposed a requirement that all personnel in any hospital that received funding from the Medicare or Medicaid programs be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. The requirement applied to the hospitals that were hosting clinical rotations for Dordt students.
Citing what he calls his “sincerely held and firm religious objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine,” Perry applied for a religious exemption from the vaccine requirement. Because he was a nursing student and not a hospital employee, his application for an exemption was made to the school.
According to Perry’s lawsuit, his request for an exemption was denied by Aaron Baart, Dordt’s chief of staff and the dean of its chapel. The lawsuit claims Baart stated that in keeping with state guidelines, Perry’s beliefs must be religious and not based merely on philosophical, scientific, moral, personal, or medical opposition to immunizations.
The lawsuit claims that Baart said a valid request for a religious exemption would have to include a “published copy” of the tenets and practices of the recognized denomination of which Perry claimed to be a member. Because Perry failed to provide that, according to his lawsuit, Baart said his request for an exemption was being denied.
Unable to complete clinical rotations in the spring 2022 semester, Perry was dropped from the nursing program.
In his lawsuit, Perry argues that because the school has granted religious exemptions to other students and denied one to him, it has discriminated against him because of his religion in violation of Iowa law.
Perry’s lawsuit gives no indication as to what Perry’s religion is.
He is represented by Alan Ostergren of the self-described “conservative public-interest law firm” known as the Kirkwood Institute, which has been pursuing litigation against the state and other governmental agencies on a number of issues.
Dordt University has yet to file a response to the lawsuit and was recently granted an extension of time to do so.
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