From the horses mouth
yeah, Chun was all in with the jabs...he wanted a 50 yard line show of alignment with Rolo at the center...awesome
"Rolovich is Catholic and said in the lawsuit that he applied for a religious exemption from the vaccine requirement, but that exemption was denied and he was fired"
If that's correct - that the exemption was denied - then it wasn't Chun's decision and he should be removed as a defendant. But it makes it harder to prove the case - now he has to show that the majority of the committee discriminated against him, instead of just proving Chun did.
Inslee won't stay as a defendant, because the courts have already held he was acting within his emergency authority.
His constitutional rights weren't violated, nobody forced him to do anything. He chose to not get vaccinated, and the state chose not to continue employing him. That's also been ruled on by the courts. Statutory rights...again, Inslee was acting within emergency authority. Contractual rights? Doubtful they were violated either, but that's less clear.
"Chun wanted him to get the vaccine at the 50-yard line with all of his players standing around him" This sounds pretty metaphorical to me, I don't think it's a strong case. Even if Chun said that, would a reasonable person believe that he
actually was setting that expectation?
"Whether it was fear, whether it was misinformation, this storyline, the narrative was changing, at minimum, weekly, sometimes daily"
Yes. Requirements were changing...based on changing guidance from CDC and other authorities.
“In August, there was an opportunity to check a box for personal and religious exemptions,” Rolovich said. “Myself and all the coaches clicked that box.” A short time later, Inslee took away the personal exemption, and “it started getting a little bit more contentious.”
Yes. And it was publicly announced that as soon as one of the vaccines got FDA approval, the personal exemptions would go away...and that's exactly what happened. That was Inslee, not Chun or WSU.
“It was an evolution of discussions because the rules kept changing,” Rolovich explained. “A bunch of kids got COVID-19 because they didn’t want to wear masks, and then they have to put masks on again. Nothing was really straight up.”
Now he's jumping around in the timeline. Masks went away in some places based on declining rates, then came back when rates went back up. But that was in the fall, well after the vaccines became available.
“They could have let me go without cause, and just we shake hands and disagree,” he said. That would have meant that Rolovich would have received his buyout of $3.6 million.
Fine. Offer him the $3.6 million, on the condition that he go away.
I'd probably be able to accept that outcome. Except that after reading this full page of whining and thin excuses, I don't really want WSU to pay him at all. I'd rather they slapped him around a courtroom publicly and he ended up with nothing.
