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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A former employee at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank has dropped her lawsuit against parent company Providence Health & Services, in which she maintained she was harassed and forced to quit in 2022 after applying to be excused on religious grounds from the hospital's mandatory employee coronavirus vaccination policy.,
Amanda Castaneda's Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit allegations included religious discrimination and harassment, wrongful constructive termination, retaliation, assault, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On Thursday, Castaneda's attorney filed court papers with Judge Stephen P. Pfahler asking that her complaint be dismissed "with prejudice," meaning it cannot be refiled.
The court papers do not state if a settlement was reached or if Castaneda is not pursuing the case for other reasons. In their April 2023 court papers, brought three months after the suit was filed, Providence attorneys urged that the plaintiff's case be tossed out and cited multiple defenses, including that the claims belonged in the workers' compensation arena.
Castaneda, a Christian, was hired in March 2019 and worked as a department assistant for imaging services and her supervisors were Andleeb Dombrowski and Kimberly Harrell, both co-defendants in the suit, the suit stated.
Before vaccines became available, Castaneda and other PHS employees submitted to twice-weekly COVID-19 testing and wore personal protective equipment, allowing the plaintiff to adequately perform her job, but in August 2021, PHS began requiring all its employees to receive a COVID vaccine by no later than Sept. 30 of that year, the suit stated.
Castaneda explained to Dombrowski that she did not want to receive a COVID shot because doing so would violate her religious beliefs, but Dombrowski insisted that she do so, saying, "As the director, I am telling you, you have to get COVID vaccinated or you will be terminated," the suit alleged.
"Not only did Dombrowski try to force Castaneda to violate her Christian faith, but she deliberately hid from Castaneda the fact that the vaccine mandate allowed for religious exemptions," the suit contended.
When Castaneda asked to see a written copy of the vaccine mandate to see if she could be excused because of her faith, Dombrowski told the plaintiff that only Muslims and Jews qualified for the exemption and that Christians did not, the suit alleged.
Nonetheless, Castaneda requested an exemption and her request was provisionally approved on condition she continue to be tested and wear protective garb, a decision that left Dombrowski "outraged," the suit stated.
Management subsequently "created a hostile and abusive work environment" based on Castaneda's religion and her workplace was "permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule and insult," altering the plaintiff's conditions of employment, the suit stated.
"Defendants deliberately pressured Castaneda to quit her job and created working conditions so intolerable that she would leave," the suit stated.
The hospital hired and trained Castaneda's replacement, who told the plaintiff, "I got the job and you will be training me on how to do your job," the suit stated.
Castaneda also alleged that in June 2022, Harrell yelled at her, blocked the plaintiff's way out of her own office and threw some of Castaneda's papers around.
"Like waves crashing on the beach, defendants sent waves of employees to harass and abuse Castaneda," the suit stated.
Castaneda also started losing her hair from the severe emotional distress, the suit alleged.
When Castaneda complained to human resources, the department told the plaintiff she was the one being investigated, according to the suit, which alleged that Castaneda was forced to resign last August due to her allegedly intolerable work environment.