Americans watched Democrats trample religious freedom during COVID.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
And a Florida children's hospital fired one Christian worker over COVID shot beliefs but accepted others' faith.
Liberty Counsel fights for fired HVAC technician's religious rights
Christian Marin worked as an HVAC technician at Nemours Children's Hospital in Florida before administrators destroyed his life over a shot he refused to take.
Marin's pro-life beliefs prevented him from getting the COVID vaccine because it was developed using aborted fetal cell lines.
He requested a religious exemption in 2021, explaining his sincere Christian convictions.
The hospital denied his request and fired him despite granting religious accommodations to other employees whose objections it deemed theologically valid.
Liberty Counsel just filed a brief with Florida's Sixth District Court of Appeal arguing Nemours violated both federal and state law by discriminating against Marin based on the content of his religious beliefs.
The brief makes a bombshell argument that Florida courts have been applying the wrong legal framework to religious discrimination cases for years.
Liberty Counsel argues the Florida Civil Rights Act doesn't include the "undue hardship" defense that Title VII provides to employers, yet Florida courts keep grafting federal standards onto state law.
https://twitter.com/libertycounsel/status/2016882550950556028?s=20
Marin worked mostly alone installing and maintaining HVAC systems in empty rooms with minimal patient contact.
The hospital never assessed whether accommodating him would actually cause problems.
Get this: Nemours reviewed exemption requests with zero information about what employees actually did. They treated Marin, who worked alone in empty rooms, exactly like nurses handling dying babies in the ICU.
Hospital's discrimination revealed selective enforcement
Here's where it gets ugly. Nemours approved religious exemptions for some employees while slamming the door on anyone with pro-life objections to fetal cell lines.
The hospital essentially decided which religious beliefs counted and which didn't, appointing itself judge and jury over Christian theology.
That's textbook religious discrimination under Florida law.
The Florida Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from classifying employees in any way which would deprive any individual of employment opportunities because of religion.
Nemours grouped pro-life objectors into one category and issued wholesale denials.
Liberty Counsel's brief points out something even more damning about the hospital's justification for firing Marin.
Nemours claimed unvaccinated employees posed transmission risks to staff and patients.
The science tells a different story.
Studies after Omicron showed vaccinated and unvaccinated people spread COVID at identical rates.
A massive UK study tracked over 23,000 Omicron cases and found the exact same 15.8% transmission rate whether someone got the shot or not.
The vaccines were designed to keep people out of hospitals, not stop them from spreading the virus.
https://twitter.com/libertycounsel/status/2016882539881742618?s=20
Here's the kicker: the CDC's own data from fall 2022 showed vaccinated people testing positive at 33% compared to 29% for the unvaccinated.
Scientific evidence destroys hospital's defense
Nemours' categorical exclusion of unvaccinated employees rested on assumptions contradicted by the science.
Serial testing would have been far more effective at preventing transmission than checking vaccination status, since testing identifies actual virus carriers while vaccination status provides no information about current infection.
The hospital had sophisticated access to scientific literature showing vaccination didn't reduce transmission after Omicron.
Nemours chose to ignore the science and fire a Christian worker whose job involved minimal human contact.
https://twitter.com/libertycounsel/status/2016624206520222086?s=20
The Florida Commission on Human Relations sided with the hospital in 2023, claiming Marin's refusal violated federal Title VII law and created an undue hardship.
Liberty Counsel argues the Commission used the wrong legal framework entirely because Florida's Civil Rights Act doesn't include an undue hardship defense despite courts importing it from federal law for decades.
The Florida Legislature enacted the Civil Rights Act in 1992, years after Title VII, and deliberately chose not to adopt the accommodation-hardship framework.
When the Legislature wanted to reference Title VII standards, it did so explicitly in the attorney's fees provision, but issued no such directive for religious discrimination claims.
Nemours violated the Florida Civil Rights Act for firing Marin over his pro-life beliefs while accepting other beliefs.
Sources:
- Liberty Counsel, "Florida children's hospital fired pro-life, Christian employee for refusing COVID-19 shot," LifeSiteNews, January 29, 2026.
- Brief of Amicus Curiae Liberty Counsel in Support of Appellant, Marin v. Nemours Children's Hospital, Florida Sixth District Court of Appeal, January 28, 2026.
- Hestor Allen et al., "Comparative Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) and Delta (B.1.617.2) Variants and the Impact of Vaccination," Epidemiology & Infection, 2023.
- Ruth Link-Gelles et al., "Effectiveness of Bivalent mRNA Vaccines in Preventing Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection," MMWR, December 2, 2022.
