Man sues Catholic school in battle over whose faith counts for vaccine mandates

Boston College says it had a religious right to require employees to get a COVID shot. Avenir Agaj says he had a religious right to reject the vaccine.

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A religious man is suing a religious school after he was fired over COVID vaccines. He claimed a religious right not to get vaccinated while the school insists they had a religious right to demand employees get the shot. The legal chaos is entirely the result of a Supreme Court that has allowed faith-based arguments to trump common sense at just about every turn.

Man refuses vaccine (Image via Adobe Spark)

In April of 2021, when COVID vaccines were finally available to everyone, Boston College required employees to get them. After all, as a Catholic school, it was simply following Church orders. The Vatican had released a statement telling people they had a “duty to protect one’s own health” as well as a “duty to preserve the common good” against the “grave danger” of the virus.

Employees who wanted an exemption to the vaccine requirements were asked to provide proof of their claims—like a doctor’s note saying they needed a health exemption or a religious leader’s note saying there was a faith-based reason to not get the vaccine.

Boston College said it did everything by the book in a neutral, non-discriminatory way.

Avenir Agaj says that’s not true.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this year (without the help of a lawyer), the landscaper said that the school violated his sincerely held religious beliefs by firing him after he refused to get the vaccine.

He is a self-described “Bogomil," a Christian sect that was founded in the 10th century and believes Satan created all matter, and he practices “ethnobotany,” which is a fancy word for traditional medicine that relies on plants and includes a hell of a lot of pseudoscientific beliefs. He later said he believes in “faith healing” and that his religion forbids him from taking anything that “risks his health and spiritual well-being, and that his body is his temple and it’s his duty to keep it pure and free from filth.”

Without going into much detail about those beliefs, he wrote that he complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), but that went nowhere, so this lawsuit was his last chance for justice. And he had a laundry list of reasons he was angry:

In court I will provide evidence and prove the following:

BOSTON COLLEGE DISCRIMINATED me intentionally because of my SINCERE HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AS A BOGOMIL a minority religion, and my MEDICAL PRACTICE ETHNOBOTANY.

BOSTON COLLEGE DISCRIMINATED against my culture and origins as legal immigrant minority.

BOSTON COLLEGE VIOLATED my PRIVACY.

BOSTON COLLEGE made false representations.

BOSTON COLLEGE showed intend to DECEIVE.

BOSTON COLLEGE violated BONA FIDE Good Faith.

BOSTON COLLEGE tried under DURESS to make me resign.

BOSTON COLLEGE was DE FACTO opposed to exemption for the unvaccinated.

BOSTON COLLEGE PUT BARRIER to my employment by terminating me as unvaccinated, but on the other hand allowing unvaccinated vendors, contractors and sellers to operate and access the campus and work violating my equal opportunity act.

BOSTON COLLEGE clearly disproved and opposed my SINCERE HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND CULTURAL ORIGINS.

BOSTON COLLEGE was actively engaged in HARASSEMENT, COERSION, INTIMIDATION, DISCRIMINATION, AND RETALIATION ON THE BASIS OF MEDICAL AND SINCERELY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

Sounds completely sane. And for his troubles, he was demanding $1.2 million in damages or $300,000 in back pay and benefits (as well as his job back).

Boston College eventually asked the court to dismiss the case because, they said, “Agaj did not submit adequate information to support his exemption request.” When they asked him for a note from his religious leader, he didn’t give one—he said he didn’t “have access to such documents.” He also didn’t submit any paperwork backing up the connection between his faith and his anti-vax beliefs… probably because the thousand-year-old religion didn’t have much to say about vaccines in its charter.

They also noted that his original complaint to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination didn’t include some of the problems he was now insisting he had—meaning he “[failed] to exhaust administrative remedies.”

More to the point, though, Boston College said allowing unvaccinated people to be on campus in the midst of a pandemic—especially when those people had no good reason not to get the shot—imposed an “undue hardship” on the school… because, obviously, it could lead to more people dying. That’s why they had to fire him.

Boston College said it offered reasonable accommodations but Agaj didn’t take advantage of any of them. What he wanted was a non-starter.

A few weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick (a Biden appointee) allowed the religious discrimination claims to proceed while dismissing the others. The reason? He made it clear the vaccine violated his faith… and that’s it.

… [Agaj’s second exemption request conveyed that] Agaj believed the COVID-19 vaccine would pose a risk to his health, and that the College’s vaccination requirement thus conflicted with a tenet of the Bogomil faith requiring adherents to abstain from taking action that would pose a risk to their health or spiritual wellbeing…

It also conveyed a religious belief that Agaj must keep his body free from impurities, and that taking the vaccine would conflict with that belief. The request thus put Boston College on notice that Agaj’s adherence to the tenets of his faith was inconsistent with its vaccination policy.

At this early stage in the case, that is enough to plausibly allege that Boston College’s failure to accommodate Agaj’s sincerely held religious beliefs, and its subsequent termination of his employment for failure to comply with its vaccine requirement, amounted to religious discrimination…

It’s not that the judge buys any of this bullshit; rather, she’s saying that the ingredients are present for a religious discrimination lawsuit, so Boston College will have to defend its actions on those grounds. They can’t just ask for the lawsuit to be dismissed because they claimed Agaj’s requests were personal preferences rather than actual religious claims.

Late last month, Boston College responded in a little more depth to the original claims, reiterating much of what I’ve already written. They said that their policy on vaccines “adhered to and was informed by Church teaching on this subject. In issuing and acting on its vaccination policy, Boston College was engaged in the free exercise of its religious beliefs.”

Which means this ongoing case pits the religious beliefs of a Catholic school against the religious beliefs of an employee. In a more reasonable world, a school asking employees to provide a damn good reason for not getting vaccinated if they want to avoid an otherwise sensible mandate would not be in question. But because the employee holds nutty beliefs about vaccines that happen to be faith-based, this lawsuit hasn’t been laughed out of the courtroom.

He may not win the case, but it’s ridiculous that conservatives in our legal system have made religion a catch-all weapon that allows people to avoid following any rule they claim violates their faith.

As long as they fill out the proper paperwork, anyway.

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