A Tennessee woman who was fired from her job for refusing her company’s un-American COVID-19 vaccine mandate two years ago is getting the last laugh after a federal court awarded her a major cash payout last week.
When the country’s big businesses, corporate media, cretins in science and tech and the federal government were all laughing at people who had essentially lost their rights under the medical tyranny that took place during the COVID pandemic, Tanja Benton of Chattanooga, Tennessee made a simple request.
She asked her bosses at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee to waive their vaccine mandate for her, citing her faith and concerns about the ingredients used in the shots.
By all appearances and from what we know, Benton had been a great employee for the company, which she worked for as a biostatistical research scientist from 2005 until she was let go in 2022.
When the woman requested that she be given a waiver offering her a choice about whether or not not receive the experimental vaccines that were quickly rolled out less than a year after coronavirus infections spread worldwide, she was denied.
Benton was unceremoniously fired after 17 years on the job, but she did not end her saga with the company there, WZTV-TV in Nashville reported.
The woman sued her former employer.
As the local news station noted, not only did Benton argue that she had a valid reason to refuse being compelled to get her injections but she rarely encountered other people on the job and she was not in contact with sick patients as part of her regular duties.
In fact, she worked from home for the last 18 months of her employment with the company – alone and presumably in contact with no one.
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Still, BCBST fired her citing its “no exceptions” policy on COVID shots.
She filed a lawsuit in federal court.
Benton argued in her case that she “firmly believes, based upon personal research, that all COVID-19 vaccines are derived from aborted fetus cell lines.”
The lawsuit added she “cannot in good conscience consume the vaccine, which would not only defile her body but also anger and dishonor God.”
BCBST did the popular thing at the time and terminated her but the company’s decision bit it in court when a federal jury found last Thursday that she had “proved by a preponderance of the evidence” that her hesitance to take a mRNA vaccine “was based on a sincerely-held religious belief.”
More than four years after COVID swept the world and more than three years after the vaccines became available to the public, BCBST is about to pay big for sacrificing Benton, discounting her years of service and letting her go.
The company must pay her a total sum of $687,240, according to a judgment filed on June 28 in the District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The jury found that not only was she owed $177,240 in lost wages but also another $10,000 in compensatory damages.
As for the lion’s share of her coming payday, jurors awarded her $500,000 in punitive damages.
It is difficult to imagine Benton will be the last person to receive such a payout, given how many people in this country were treated as second-class citizens during the reaction and overreaction to the pandemic.
More people are sure to join Benton in the coming years as they each laugh their way to the bank for facing a kind of discrimination that just a few years would have seemed unimaginable to a great many Americans.
