The lawsuit filed Thursday claims that the Rochester-based health care system refused to grant a security guard’s request for a reasonable religious accommodation to its mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy.

Mayo Clinic discriminated against a security guard by effectively forcing him to get a COVID-19 shot despite his religious beliefs, federal employment regulators claim. Citing his Pentecostal faith, Cody Schultz asked Mayo in 2021 to exempt him from its mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy,

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, illegally refused a security guard’s religious request to be exempted from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday (EEOC v.