Jury finds Highway Patrol guilty of retaliation in NC trooper’s suit

A federal jury has found the North Carolina Highway Patrol guilty of retaliation in the case of a state trooper who was fired after raising concerns about mandatory COVID testing.

The jury verdict Tuesday in Asheville included an award of $500,000 in damages for plaintiff Jonathan Daniel Williams.

The case went to trial this week after Chief US District Judge Martin Reidinger ruled in January that the retaliation claim in Williams’ lawsuit could move forward. Reidinger threw out other claims Williams made against the state Department of Public Safety and five Highway Patrol supervisors.

“Here, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff, the Plaintiff has presented a prima facie case of retaliation,” Chief US District Judge Martin Reidinger wrote in his January order.

Williams submitted a religious exemption request on Nov. 22, 2021, to avoid mandatory nasal swab COVID testing, Reidinger explained. “The following day, a personnel complaint was filed against him,” the judge wrote. “The Plaintiff was subsequently terminated from his employment for his failure to comply with the DPS testing requirements ‘as of December 29, 2021,’ even though the Plaintiff did not receive written notice of DPS’s decision on his religious exemption request (and the availability of non-invasive testing) until December 23, 2021 and he substantially complied with the testing requirements once he received that notification.”

“Under these circumstances, the Plaintiff has presented a sufficient forecast of evidence to show that DPS’s purported nonretaliatory reasons for termination were merely a pretext for discrimination,” Reidinger wrote.

While the retaliation claim can move forward, Reidinger granted the state’s motion for summary judgment on Williams’ claims involving religious accommodation under Title VII, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Reidinger dismissed all claims against five individual defendants named in Williams’ suit.

In September 2021, responding to a COVID-related executive order from then-Gov. Roy Cooper, the Department of Public Safety issued a new policy related to vaccines and testing.

“This policy specifically required all DPS employees — including state troopers — to either be vaccinated or be subjected to regular ‘accepted diagnostic testing’ for COVID-19,” Reidinger wrote.

Unvaccinated employees were required to produce negative COVID-19 tests regularly.

“The Plaintiff initially complied with the DPS policy, submitting to nasal swab testing on September 4 and September 16, 2021,” Reidinger wrote. “After the second test, however, the Plaintiff became ‘convicted spiritually that what [he] had done was wrong’ and that the nasal swab testing ‘went against [his] conscience and beliefs.’”

Williams never submitted to further naval swab testing.

By November 2021, a supervisor warned Williams about the need to submit updated test results. Twelve days after an initial conversation about the topic, Williams submitted a religious accommodation exemption request.

“Specifically, the Plaintiff stated, in pertinent part, that ‘the administration of vaccines such as Covid-19 vaccine and repetitive invasive testing such as Covid19 Testing, [was] contrary to [his] sincerely held religious beliefs,” Reidinger wrote.

A personnel complaint against Williams began the next day.

DPS denied the religious exemption in a letter sent on Dec. 23, 2021. While the department also denied Williams’ request to be exempted from weekly testing, the letter indicated that the governor’s executive order and DPS policy both accommodated saliva testing.

Williams “determined that saliva testing would not violate his religious convictions” and submitted to three saliva tests from Dec. 30, 2021, through Jan. 18, 2022. “Any gaps in the Plaintiff’s testing were due to appointment availability; saliva testing required scheduled appointments, and at times there were no available slots within the required seven-day window,” Reidinger wrote.

DPS fired Williams on Jan. 24, 2022. The separation notice indicated that he had been fired “on the grounds that ‘[a]s of December 29, 2021,’ the Plaintiff had ‘failed to provide either documentation of fully vaccinated status, or weekly test results … as required.’”

“Jury finds Highway Patrol guilty of retaliation in NC trooper’s suit” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.