Three Walt Disney World workers who refused to wear masks or get vaccinated against COVID have sued the company, saying they were fired for opposing the rules because of their religious beliefs.
They allege Disney discriminated against them because it did not accommodate their requests to be exempt from the vaccine mandate and face-covering requirements, according to the lawsuit filed in Osceola Circuit Court last week. The vaccine mandate was suspended in November after Florida lawmakers made it illegal but Disney’s mask requirements remained in place.
The ex-employees, Barbara Andreas, Stephen Cribb and Adam Pajer, say they worked with Disney between seven and 20 years.
They claimed Christian scripture instructed them to keep their bodies free of harmful or foreign substances, court records show. They also said they opposed the use of “fetal cells” in vaccine development. No COVID-19 vaccine contains such cells, but lab-grown cell lines derived from decades-old tissue samples were used in research and development.
Andreas said masking her face would be an affront to God since “[w]e are made in his image,” records show. Court documents do not show Cribb or Pajer’s religious reasons for forgoing masks, but the lawsuit claims the masks restricted their breathing and singled them out from other employees.
Disney representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Pajer spoke out against Disney’s policies in a group chat with other workers and began handing out typed notices about workplace discrimination to managers who were enforcing Disney’s COVID-19 rules, court records say.
In the lawsuit, he claimed a manager grabbed one of these notices in May and tried to burn it with a lighter while Pajer was still holding it.
Andreas was fired in March from her job as a guest experience manager at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex, while guest experience manager Cribb was fired in April and part-time banquet server Pajer was fired in June, records show.
The lawsuit says they are seeking an unspecified amount of money to compensate for lost wages, benefits and attorney’s fees.
They each reported Disney to state and federal authorities, including the Florida Attorney General, the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for the alleged discrimination and retaliation and for violating state laws prohibiting workplace vaccine mandates, according to the lawsuit.
Suing under a state statute on whistleblowing, the three ex-employees claim filing those reports contributed to Disney firing them. Rachel Rodriguez, a lawyer representing the ex-employees, said their claims with state and federal agencies were still pending.
Andreas’ state and federal complaints were filed after Disney fired her, according to the lawsuit, while Cribbs and Pajer’s were filed while they were still employed.
A similar lawsuit, filed by Orange County Fire Rescue employees over the county’s former vaccine mandate, was dropped in June.
In the Disney lawsuit, the former employees refer to the COVID-19 vaccine as a “a medical experiment,” and a “known poison,” citing debunked claims about its production and safety.
In his request for an exemption, Cribb wrote, “trusting in ‘science’ has never gotten me anywhere and will get many people sick or killed with an experimental poison,” records show. Andreas said covering her face at work would be “sinful.”
Disney instituted a mandatory employee vaccine requirement in July 2021 that allowed employees to request an exemption from vaccination for religious or medical reasons. For the former, employees had to specifically explain how their religious beliefs prevented them from being vaccinated.
The mandate was suspended after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation limiting companies’ power to require employee vaccination. Under one of the bills, employers must allow workers to forgo vaccination if they agree to undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear protective gear.
After Disney paused the mandate, they still required unvaccinated employees to wear masks at work. Rodriguez said Disney’s health and safety protocol for unvaccinated employees were not reasonable accommodations.
Andreas’ vaccine and masking exemption request was denied in December, records show. Cribb and Pajer claim their requests were never fully processed, according to the lawsuit.
An email from a Disney representative included in court records stated that Cribb, as of April, had not individually filed an accommodation request for Disney’s face covering requirement.
Disney employees showed little public resistance to the vaccine mandate when it was announced.
In September, a group of about 30 people protested the requirement outside an entrance to Walt Disney World a couple of weeks after the policy took effect. At the time, organizer Nick Caturano said hundreds of cast members told him they were concerned about the mandate but were scared to speak out.
Disney’s union leaders agreed with the mandate, with Unite Here Local 362 president Eric Clinton saying, “vaccines are the best way to protect all of us.”
krice@orlandosentinel.com and @katievrice on Twitter