Today’s blacklisted American: CVS fires nurse for refusing to violate her religious beliefs
Robyn Strader
They’re coming for you next: Despite accommodating nurse practitioner Robyn Strader’s religious beliefs for more than six years, CVS fired her on October 31, 2021 after suddenly deciding that the Christian religion was no longer valid and no employees could cite it when it came time to prescribe drugs.
Robyn worked at a CVS MinuteClinic in Keller, Texas since 2015. Robyn sought a religious accommodation because prescribing any medications that could intentionally end the development or life of an unborn child would force her to violate her beliefs. For six-and-a-half years, the company accommodated her without a problem. When someone requested such a medication, usually only a few times per year, Robyn referred them to another practitioner at her location or to another MinuteClinic located just a couple miles away.
But CVS reversed course, joining the ranks of the “woke” corporations rendering religious employees second class citizens. In 2021, the company stated it would no longer honor religious accommodations related to such medications. Soon after this policy was put in place, CVS terminated Robyn.
Strader is now suing, with the non-profit legal firm First Liberty representing here. You can read her lawsuit here [pdf].
The complaint demands Strader’s full restitution, including back pay and punitive damages, noting that such a policy not only violates federal civil rights law, it also violates several Texas laws, including one that protects employees from religious discrimination and a second that exempts medical personnel from participating in abortion or abortion-related procedures if his or her religion forbids it.
The suit’s demand for punitive damages is based on what it calls — and clearly documents — CVS’s “intentional” behavior, “acted with malice, oppression, or reckless indifference.” Not only had CVS been able to easily accommodate Strader for six and a half years, when it suddenly decided to change policies, it did so based on no legal premise, refused to negotiate in any way with Strader, and then attempted to pressure her to violate her religion. From the complaint:
CVS never engaged with Ms. Strader about how it could continue to accommodate her religious beliefs against prescribing contraceptive and abortifacient drugs.
Rather, starting on or around August 28, 2021, Ms. Young [her supervisor] called or visited Ms. Strader at work on a near-weekly basis to ask whether Ms. Strader was going to change, abandon, or violate her religious views and prescribe hormonal contraceptives. Sometimes Ms. Young even called Ms. Strader on Ms. Strader’s days off to ask whether Ms. Strader was going to change, abandon, or violate her religious views and prescribe hormonal contraceptives.
During these conversations, Ms. Young often sounded anxious and asked Ms. Strader a series of questions, but typically without giving Ms. Strader an opportunity to answer. It was evident that Ms. Young was under pressure from her managers to get Ms. Strader to quit or abandon her religious accommodation. Ms. Young was also trying to make Ms. Strader feel ashamed about her religious beliefs.
The press release at the first link above notes that First Liberty is presently defending seven other people — all but one have already been subjects of this blacklist column — who have been fired because they would not agree to their employer’s demand that they accept the left’s political or woke agendas. These cases, as well as all the stories from my blacklist column, illustrate starkly the intolerance that now permeates American society. It is now considered reasonable to demand that everyone obey only one political position — the left’s — and if anyone refuses, it is also considered reasonable to fire them for doing so.
For our culture to heal itself and become more tolerant again, not only do all these lawsuits have to be victories, resulting in significant payments to the victims, the individuals who actually instituted these oppressive policies have to somehow come to the realization that they have been acting like Nazi thugs. Until that happens, creating an actual cultural change, no number of victorious lawsuits will change anything.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Robyn Strader
They’re coming for you next: Despite accommodating nurse practitioner Robyn Strader’s religious beliefs for more than six years, CVS fired her on October 31, 2021 after suddenly deciding that the Christian religion was no longer valid and no employees could cite it when it came time to prescribe drugs.
Robyn worked at a CVS MinuteClinic in Keller, Texas since 2015. Robyn sought a religious accommodation because prescribing any medications that could intentionally end the development or life of an unborn child would force her to violate her beliefs. For six-and-a-half years, the company accommodated her without a problem. When someone requested such a medication, usually only a few times per year, Robyn referred them to another practitioner at her location or to another MinuteClinic located just a couple miles away.
But CVS reversed course, joining the ranks of the “woke” corporations rendering religious employees second class citizens. In 2021, the company stated it would no longer honor religious accommodations related to such medications. Soon after this policy was put in place, CVS terminated Robyn.
Strader is now suing, with the non-profit legal firm First Liberty representing here. You can read her lawsuit here [pdf].
The complaint demands Strader’s full restitution, including back pay and punitive damages, noting that such a policy not only violates federal civil rights law, it also violates several Texas laws, including one that protects employees from religious discrimination and a second that exempts medical personnel from participating in abortion or abortion-related procedures if his or her religion forbids it.
The suit’s demand for punitive damages is based on what it calls — and clearly documents — CVS’s “intentional” behavior, “acted with malice, oppression, or reckless indifference.” Not only had CVS been able to easily accommodate Strader for six and a half years, when it suddenly decided to change policies, it did so based on no legal premise, refused to negotiate in any way with Strader, and then attempted to pressure her to violate her religion. From the complaint:
CVS never engaged with Ms. Strader about how it could continue to accommodate her religious beliefs against prescribing contraceptive and abortifacient drugs.
Rather, starting on or around August 28, 2021, Ms. Young [her supervisor] called or visited Ms. Strader at work on a near-weekly basis to ask whether Ms. Strader was going to change, abandon, or violate her religious views and prescribe hormonal contraceptives. Sometimes Ms. Young even called Ms. Strader on Ms. Strader’s days off to ask whether Ms. Strader was going to change, abandon, or violate her religious views and prescribe hormonal contraceptives.
During these conversations, Ms. Young often sounded anxious and asked Ms. Strader a series of questions, but typically without giving Ms. Strader an opportunity to answer. It was evident that Ms. Young was under pressure from her managers to get Ms. Strader to quit or abandon her religious accommodation. Ms. Young was also trying to make Ms. Strader feel ashamed about her religious beliefs.
The press release at the first link above notes that First Liberty is presently defending seven other people — all but one have already been subjects of this blacklist column — who have been fired because they would not agree to their employer’s demand that they accept the left’s political or woke agendas. These cases, as well as all the stories from my blacklist column, illustrate starkly the intolerance that now permeates American society. It is now considered reasonable to demand that everyone obey only one political position — the left’s — and if anyone refuses, it is also considered reasonable to fire them for doing so.
For our culture to heal itself and become more tolerant again, not only do all these lawsuits have to be victories, resulting in significant payments to the victims, the individuals who actually instituted these oppressive policies have to somehow come to the realization that they have been acting like Nazi thugs. Until that happens, creating an actual cultural change, no number of victorious lawsuits will change anything.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The company’s problem is that they from the time they hired her accommodated her religious beliefs. From the start their policy should have been that your religious beliefs shall not interfere with your objectively prescribing or dispensing any appropriately prescribed by a doctor medication.
Other than the safety and appropriateness of the drug related to the patient standing before her, that really is none of her business. If the drug is legal and appropriate in the state that she works, then just do your job as per your employers’ specification.
Now the company has changed their own policy related to her and her previously accommodated religious beliefs. Why now? What changed? Please explain.
As long as there was a reasonable customer alternative, which i assume is the theory the company apparently has been operating under, there should be no problem. And just wait until she retires to adjust their policy, she looks like she is in that time of her life.
The company IMO will be paying for her accelerated and enhanced retirement plan.
How do we fight political warfare in America?
LAWYERS, COURTS AND MONEY!
Cotour: As usual it appears you did not read the lawsuit complaint prior to commenting. The law, both nationally and in Texas, makes very clear that CVS could never have told her, as you say, “your religious beliefs shall not interfere with your objectively prescribing or dispensing any appropriately prescribed by a doctor medication.”
For years CVS recognized the law, and never made this illegal demand. The suit relies on this fact.
Cvs went woke it is why i pulled all my scripts out of there.
You are correct I did not read the entire article. Old habits are hard to break, but I got the gist of the story.
We are back at the cake bakers / flower shop issue and a private business owner being compelled to act or perform in a way, shape or form that is counter to your religious beliefs. This I think is a bit different, she is an employee.
And it may be technically illegal but someone somewhere within this company is making choices. As long as she could refuse and there be a reasonable alternative its all good.
I would count more on the fact that the company was all this time accommodating her and now they are not. Why?
I think in the end when it all shakes out the enhanced retirement is in the cards for Ms. Strader.
She is a nurse practitioner, she is allowed to prescribe some medications, one of which is the morning after pill.
There is no other reason for CVS to have a nurse. A pharmacy just fills prescriptions, normally.
The fact is they stated and agreed to work around her religious restrictions in the past and that set the precedent. They had policies in place to work around any problem. To change everything now and to then fire her for it is not good.
My guess is that inside 2 months they will settle this outside of court. If I were her I would claim that I was hoping to retire while working at CVS and ask for all potential income from those possible years now lost, plus pain and suffering.
The new CVS morals should be worth a half a million or more to them.
A 6 minute video from 2015 where Steven Crowder goes around to Muslim bakeries asking for a gay wedding cake. They refused. The left doesn’t go after Muslims.
HIDDEN CAM: #GayWeddingCakes at Muslim Bakeries?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgWIhYAtan4
Regardless of the law in question I disagree with this assessment:
“Other than the safety and appropriateness of the drug related to the patient standing before her, that really is none of her business. If the drug is legal and appropriate in the state that she works, then just do your job as per your employers’ specification.”
From her perspective, and based on sincerely held beliefs, there is not one but two patients before her, and the drug would harm one of them. That is the entire nature of her position.
Agree or disagree as you like, but the point is that CVS,and many others, are choosing to disallow this point of view.
Point taken.
Sippin:
Remember this from not so long ago?
Where the government through various pharmacists insisted that you have injected into your body an experimental drug and were actively denied your and your doctors free choice in your medical treatment.
Minnesota pharmacists won’t fill hydroxychloroquine prescriptions
A medical doctor turned Minnesota state senator says pharmacists won’t fill hydroxychloroquine prescriptions even after Walz lifted his restrictions on the drug.
https://alphanews.org/pharmacists-wont-fill-hydroxychloroquine-prescriptions/#:~:text=State%20Sen.%20Scott%20Jensen%2C%20a%20medical%20doctor%2C%20reports,from%20filling%20hydroxychloroquine%20prescriptions%20written%20to%20treat%20COVID-19.
Who’s business other then the safety aspects and correct dosage and the other rational things that a pharmacists needs to be concerned about where a pharmacist gets in between a patient and a doctor who is caring for them!?
https://www.singlecare.com/blog/can-a-pharmacist-refuse-to-fill-a-prescription/
Can a pharmacist refuse to fill a prescription?
Refusing to fill a prescription is not against the law. Pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for a number of reasons, including:
The patient may be abusing or misusing the prescription drug
The patient may be trying to fill a prescription too early or in quantities against pharmacy law restrictions
The patient may be at risk of adverse effects due to drug interactions or an incorrect dosage
The pharmacy no longer has the medication in stock
The prescription is completely illegible
The prescription is altered
The prescription is missing required information like the doctor’s signature or strength of the drug
You are concerned about other issues
Pharmacists can legally refuse to fill prescriptions due to religious or personal values in most states that have conscience laws. However, some states require that pharmacists avoid neglecting or abandoning the patient’s needs. In other words, you have to ensure the patient is still able to get treated elsewhere if they’re not going to fill the prescription.
CVS is now added to my banned …no go list.
I’m never setting foot inside another CVS. It’s Walgreen’s for me.
There is a point here that is perhaps being missed. It seems to me that in this case CVS’ new policy is to specifically object to *Christian* religious beliefs in the workplace and not those of any other religion. Imagine for a moment if such a policy were to be imposed on a devout Muslim. You can’t; it simply would not happen in the context of today’s woke culture.
The more significant story here is that it has now become open season on Christianity in America, and — make no mistake — it is the intent of The Powers That Be to to completely extirpate Christianity and the Christian world view from our country / culture / society, cf., the recent Grammy Awards ceremony. For all intents and purposes, it is understood that it is “safe” to go after Christians and their beliefs in the same fashion in which the Nazis began to harass the Jewish population in Germany in the early 1930s. In the eyes of the progressives, Christians and what they believe are now seen not as the upholders of a beneficial moral order but as “a threat to our democracy.”
Nearly two decades ago, Samuel P. Huntington (perhaps better known for his earlier book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order) addressed the roots of this project to de-Christianize this country in Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. Beginning, as he recounts, with an America that was unabashedly a Christian society, at least in terms of its cultural antecedents and the beliefs of most of its members at its founding*, he traces its more recent trajectory toward a secular, multicultural, Creed-based society in which there is no shared cultural consensus about what is right or wrong, good or bad, or moral and immoral. As he observes:
“History and psychology, however, suggest that [a purely Creedal society] is unlikely to be enough to sustain a nation for long. America with only [a woke, self hating] Creed as a basis for unity could soon evolve into a loose confederation of ethnic, racial, cultural and political groups with little or nothing in common apart from their location in the territory of what had been the United States of America.” (p. 19)
*So too, as Akhil Reed Amar describes in America’s Unwritten Constitution, this commonly held Judeo-Christian background provided the cultural DNA that brought forth our Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the Rule of Law — all seen by today’s Jacobins progressives as somehow being inimical to our democracy and our welfare as Americans.
In short, today’s progressives want an America that is not culturally Christian, albeit tolerant of other religions as enshrined in our Constitution and other founding documents, but, rather, a completely secular, *multicultural* nation that — at the end — is held together only by the brute force of an Orwellian central authority that rigidly enforces “diversity,” “equity,” and the iron rule of the Party elite. Meanwhile, the last vestiges of a Christian society / culture have to be eliminated so that this woke utopia might better be put in place.
Just an FYI: Pharmacies are only part of CVS’s business. The Minute Clinics are another – they are doc (NPs actually) in box operations.
accept the left’s political or woke agendas
It’s NOT political. It’s religious.
Progressivism is a religion and it will brook no other. It is like Islam in its demand to convert or pay the tax (and even paying the dhimmi tax, you don’t get to be in certain stations or jobs under Islam). They simply finally decided, in Ms. Strader’s case, that they would no longer allow her to work in their Progressive institution unless she paid the dhimmi tax (by bowing to their rules).
Progressivism has captured our culture. Progressivism will not support a free republic nor western civilization (several principles are antithetical to it).
Milt
February 7, 2023 at 2:57 am
There is a point here that is perhaps being missed. It seems to me that in this case CVS’ new policy is to specifically object to *Christian* religious beliefs in the workplace and not those of any other religion.
On the day Islam stands against the Progressive religion, they will also find themselves tossed out on their ear. But, for now, they are allowed as an ally against Christianity. (The Progressive Church’s goal is to totally supplant Christianity so there is no barrier against hedonism and they can “progress” to their utopia.)
GWB:
I will have to disagree with your assertion that Islam will be trashed by the progressives when Islam stands against Progressivism.
Islam does not sit at the foundation of America and its founding, Christianity does.
Islam has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with the founding of America besides Jefferson sending the Marines over to Tripoli and killing a bunch of them to get them to stop their pirating activities.
The Judaeo / Christian ethic and philosophy and the Western culture in America from the Progressives and the Globalist perspective must be destroyed and replaced with a socialistic model of control.
And that boiled down in simple terms is exactly what is going on in America today and is what we are all witness to.
Islam? No problem. And no one would dare tell a Muslim that they had to make a gay cake or provide a drug to anyone who they thought was an issue that was in opposition to their religion.
Related: (Same thing, double standard only applies where it is crafted to apply, and it only goes one way. Their way)
A PRIME EXAMPLE OF “CULTURAL APPROPRIATION”
Joy Reid: MESS NBC’s hate filled wackadoodle Radical / Liberal / Leftist commenter and interpreter of today’s politics and culture in America.
Ms. Reid constantly dresses like and wears her “White” lady clothes and hair and is clearly a prime example of “cultural appropriation”. No?
https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==AFWMhbZn-nfoY-JfBgXroHRsS0A/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2
Another example of the direct attack on Christianity, Sam Smith at the Grammys / Hollywood:
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/02/NYPICHPDPICT000006247066.jpg?resize=1536,1024&quality=75&strip=all
If you are Christian, we are for Satan, if you want to ban or draw a reasonable line on personal responsibility related to abortion, we celebrate abortion up to and even after birth.
Christianity is at the foundation of it all and must be destroyed in order to replace it all. The question remains however, with exactly what?
And that is where the rubber meets the road and the only thing that can result from it is the opposite of the theory of Christianity, which is chaos, debauchery and socialistic mandated control.
Be careful what you wish for. The real-world solutions are in the middle right / middle Left positions and NOT at the extremes. Only death, darkness and absolute control exist there.
Part of me thinks that the main stream press is loving the Balloon story, so they can avoid talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Classified docs found in Biden homes, and Biden’s obvious dimentia.
I predicted that Biden would resign this year. So far nothing. But the press does not appear to be pulling it’s punches as much.
And THAT, opposition to anything that was founded in the Judeo / Christian ethic, is the extreme radical “Progressive” Lefts religion.
And it is seen as being existential, just like “Climate change” and so ANYTHING can be justified, up to and including murder to change it.
It however is half baked and short sighted and very, very dangerous.
Ignorance being bliss and or being half educated is very, very dangerous.
This is a ridiculously evil anti-Christian act by a woketard company.
The tyrannical anti-Christian leftists misuse the legal system to harass Christians all the time. Bakers, florists, wedding photographers, etc, but only CHRISTIAN businesses, are attacked for not wanting to participate in activities that are expressly prohibited by Christian faith.
No leftist would attack a black business owner for refusing to provide services for a KKK racist activity, nor for a jewish business owner to provide services to a neo-Nazi anti-semetic activity. But Christians who do not wish to violate their religious beliefs regarding homogamy, abortion (even the chemical abortions from contraceptive pills) are deemed fair game by leftard extremists who demand submission to their bloodthirsty and biologically unnatural ideology.
This obsessive focus on attacking only Christians for their beliefs should provide adequate identification of the motivation behind the tyrannical leftard attacks.
Cotour, I spoke directly to that anti-Christian aspects of Progressivism. All I’m saying is that Progressivism will brook no other religion that might challenge it. When Islam is in that position (maybe it never will be) it will be steam-rolled, too. Because it also practices a form of morals – and that is ultimately anathema to Progressive doctrine. For now, Islam occupies the “the enemy of my enemy is my pseudo-friend” position.
I concur totally about it being in direct opposition to Christianity. It is a Christian heresy, and supplanting Christianity is its first goal. (It has largely accomplished that in our society. It is now rooting out the remnant.)
In the end, in the long-term IMO based on what the Constitution structures the dark Strategy of the progressive Political Realm will / must lose to the light Morality of the Pedestrian Realm.
If not than what?
This is what the Political warfare that is structured by the Constitution by design is to provide.
But this is before the existence of GAI (Government Artificial Intelligence) which will be a formidable adversary for the Pedestrian Realm. In the future actual reality will be indistinguishable from created reality.
We think that people are half educated and confused now?
Perception is reality.
Minor edit in first sentence of last paragraph: “not only do all these lawsuits have to be victories”
Being forced to use CVS, as our employer provided prescription drug coverage is through CVS Caremark, I can attest that there is nothing redeemable about CVS. If they ceased to exist, the world would be a better place.
Andi: Thank you. Even now, as I read it, my mind put that “to” that was not there. Fixed.