Hershey Co. employee who refused COVID-19 shot sues over being fired

• By Jonathan Bergmueller/ PennLive.com

A senior manager within The Hershey Company who refused to be vaccinated at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is now suing the company for laying him off despite applying for a religious exemption.

Thomas Szeltner, a nearly 30-year veteran of the company, said he should have been given a religious exemption to the company’s vaccine mandate because he is a devout Catholic, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court last week.

He did not want the vaccine because it was tested using lab-grown cells that originated from aborted fetuses in the 1970s.

But instead, the company said it would be too burdensome to accommodate the Palmyra man’s request and terminated him in January 2021—10 months before he would have been eligible for retirement with the company, the lawsuit said.

Szeltner said he worked remotely during the majority of the pandemic, and did not interact with other employees often. When he did, however, it was with people who held retail or factory jobs with The Hershey Company, who were not under the vaccine mandate, he said.

The Hershey Company designated the end of his employment as voluntary resignation or resignation without good cause, which prevented him from collecting retirement benefits, a bonus for the previous year and unemployment compensation, the lawsuit said.

The company offered Szeltner money if he waived all legal claims, but he did not accept. The lawsuit did not say how much the company offered him.

Szeltner said being vaccinated goes against his religious beliefs because he believes the COVID-19 vaccine was created, tested or manufactured using aborted fetus tissue.

The COVID-19 vaccine does not contain fetal cells or fetal tissues.

However, the vaccine was tested using fetal cell lines, which are grown in laboratories from cells taken from aborted fetal tissue that was collected in the 1970s and 80s, according to the National Institute of Health. The tissue reproduces indefinitely and the tissue used to test the vaccine was not the original tissue collected.

The Vatican previously announced it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that used cell lines from aborted fetuses in research and production processes.

Still, the origin of that tissue was enough to tilt Szeltner’s conscience away from being vaccinated, he told the company in September of 2021. He submitted a religious exemption request, explaining his stance on the vaccine and saying he would do everything to prevent the spread of COVID-19 short of receiving the vaccine.

The Hershey Company’s human resources department said Szeltner met the standard of having a “strongly held religious belief” multiple times, the lawsuit said. However, in November, the company told Szeltner it would be too burdensome to accommodate his request.

Szeltner is asking the court to award him money for lost wages, employment benefits, back pay, retirement benefits and severance benefits.