U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. issued a final ruling on Jan. 31, confirming that BCBST must pay Benton a total of more than $502,000 in damages following a jury’s verdict in June 2024.
The jury had initially awarded the plaintiff $687,240, finding that BCBST failed to prove it had offered a reasonable accommodation for her religious beliefs, or that accommodating her would cause undue hardship to the company. However, in accordance with federal rules for employers with more than 500 employees, the punitive damages were reduced to $300,000, bringing the total amount awarded to Benton down to $502,380.
The jury originally found that BCBST had not met its legal obligation to offer reasonable accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The ruling is part of broader litigation against BCBST, with a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of former employees who were also terminated for refusing the vaccine on religious grounds. Between October and November 2021, BCBST terminated 41 employees who had requested religious exemptions, following the company’s implementation of the vaccine mandate for 900 customer-facing roles. Many of the affected employees had been working remotely during the pandemic.
In November, a federal jury ordered Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to pay nearly $13 million in damages to a former employee who said she was wrongfully terminated for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
