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Kitsap court clerk sues county for firing her after refusing COVID vaccine
Duryea had applied for a religious and medical waiver which were rejected.
Andrew Binion Kitsap Sun
January 10, 2023
A longtime Kitsap County District Court clerk fired in 2021 because she refused the COVID-19 vaccine filed a lawsuit last month against the county, alleging she had been wrongfully terminated after the court denied her request for reasonable accommodations.
Tammy Duryea, a fiscal tech II, had been working for the court since July 1994. In August 2021 county courts required all employees to be vaccinated, the only county department requiring employees to be vaccinated.
Duryea had applied for a religious exemption for her Christian faith, as well as a medical exemption for a severe reaction she had to a flu vaccine in 1995. A doctor wrote her a note – a different doctor than she had in 1995 – saying he advised against her receiving a vaccine because of the reaction.
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Duryea’s attorney, Chalmers Johnson, said employment attorneys are beginning to sift through wrongful termination claims related to vaccine mandates and said Duryea’s case makes a strong argument for why her request for accommodation should have been granted.
“This is one of the few cases I’ve seen where a doctor wrote to the county saying, ‘I don’t want her to get vaccinated,’” Chalmers said. “They just said, ‘We don’t believe your doctor.’ They didn’t come back with their own doctor.”