A year and a half after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals knocked down the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine's original and revised COVID-19 vaccine mandates for discriminating against students and employees seeking religious exemptions, the school has paid an "historic" settlement to the 18 plaintiffs, their lawyers said this week.

The $10.3 million settlement in damages, tuition, and attorney’s fees is one of the few nationwide, in challenges to government COVID vaccine mandates, to pay money damages to plaintiffs suing for their First Amendment rights, the Thomas More Society said.

The taxpayer-funded school was spooked into paying damages after the 10th Circuit found Chancellor Don Elliman, who has led the school for 13 years, and other officials violated "clearly established" First Amendment rights, removing their qualified immunity from personal liability, according to TMS. 

Its attorney's fees are $1 million of the $10.3 million, but it didn't break down the damages and tuition portions.

The 10th Circuit dinged the school for policies that were first not facially neutral and then not practically neutral, spending months "drafting and implementing a policy hostile toward and discriminatory against certain religions, only to adopt a new, purportedly neutral policy that reached precisely the same results."

CU Anschutz will now let students "request religious accommodations on equal terms as employees," give those requests "the same consideration" as given for medical exemptions, and "refrain from future inquisitions into the supposed legitimacy of students’ and employees’ religious beliefs," the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

The suit, filed more than four years ago, started with a Catholic doctor and Buddhist medical student and added the other plaintiffs a month later.

The med school continues to defend the legitimacy of the vaccine mandate, telling The Colorado Sun the since-rescinded policy "was grounded in science, public health guidance, and our obligation to safeguard lives during an unprecedented global crisis," falsely portraying COVID vaccines as able to stop infection and transmission.

“While some chose to challenge the policy, the evidence remains clear: vaccination was essential to protecting the vulnerable, keeping hospitals open, and sustaining education and research," the school claimed without specifying that evidence.