Help Marina Stand Against Unfair Termination

Marina Shinderuk was a longtime 9-1-1 Call Center worker who was fired for refusing the COVID vaccine on religious grounds. Her employer, the City of Seattle, granted her an exemption but made no effort to accommodate her. She’s suing the City for discrimination and refusal to accommodate and she could use your help.

Marina came to this country from Ukraine as a young girl and was raised in a devout Christian household. Despite her family’s meager resources, her parents never asked for government assistance, and Marina and her siblings were instilled with a strong work ethic and sense of and personal responsibility from their earliest youth. In 2008, Marina, facing layoff in the airline industry in which she had been working for 8 years since age 18, took a job as a Telecommunicator with Seattle Police Department’s 9-1-1 Center. Eventually, she was promoted to Police Dispatcher, dispatching police and emergency situations and calls for service. A 9-1-1 Dispatcher’s job is an incredibly hard one, and Marina excelled at it, earning the respect of her colleagues and several commendations from her supervisors.

Thanks to her dedication and professionalism, Marina was promoted to Police Communications Supervisor in 2019. During this time, she participated in various City-sponsored charitable activities, like the annual Ronald McDonald Christmas Eve cruise, Polar Plunge, and Beds for Kids. She volunteered for first-responder-support work as well, doing crisis line call-taking for Code 4 NW.

In August 2021, Marina was in her fourteenth year of service at the 9-1-1 Call Center when the Mayor announced that all staff would have to get vaccinated for COVID or get a religious or medical exemption. Otherwise, they’d be terminated. Based on her lifelong religious faith, Marina immediately asked for and was granted an exemption. At this point, Marina’s employer, the City of Seattle, was required by law to explore possible work accommodations for her. Initially, the City told staff that all exempted employees would be accommodated, conditional on them doing frequent Covid testing, wearing masks, and doing social distancing, all of which Marina was happy to comply with. But then the City broke its promise for those employees with religious exemptions. Despite facing losing her career, Marina stood fast in her decision to not get vaccinated due to her religious beliefs and was terminated by the City on November 5, 2021, just 5 weeks after approving her exemption.

While numerous other City employees were working from the comfort of their homes during the pandemic, Marina came into the office and in addition to her normal 40 hours a week schedule, worked of hundreds of hours of voluntary overtime to ensure that emergency calls wouldn’t go unanswered. The 9-1-1 office was located within the West Precinct in downtown Seattle, and since the pandemic coincided with Seattle’s anti-police riots, she sometimes had to walk past threatening anti-police graffiti and navigate through mobs of angry protesters to get to and from work. Once on the job, she was often subjected to verbal abuse from hateful callers who equated her job with that of a police officer. Marina’s dedication meant nothing to the City of Seattle, who fired her anyway.

When she was terminated, Marina, a single mom of three children, lost her only source of income, as well as her pension plan, sick leave, and all health benefits for herself and her family. Facing a lack of alternate employment prospects in the area that would allow her to continue to support her family and make payments on her home, Marina had to sell her house and move to somewhere more affordable. She landed in the Midwest, where she now resides.

In dismissing Marina, the City threw away an invaluable resource. She not only took 9-1-1 calls herself, she also trained and supervised other call takers and dispatchers, typically putting in 52 to 56 hours a week. The City struggled to find a replacement for her, and this was at a time when there was a critical shortage of first responders in Seattle.

When Marina submitted her request for an exemption from the vaccine mandate, she proposed a number of alternative work arrangements to the City: She volunteered to work off-site or in a distant corner of the Call Center office. She volunteered to wear an N95 mask at all times on the job, to social distance from other staff, and to take weekly COVID tests, among other precautions. Unfortunately, the City didn’t explore any of these alternatives. Nor did they offer to put her on administrative leave, while the frequently changing public guidance relating to Covid was settled. Instead, they just sacked her in a perfunctory letter after a Zoom meeting with a supervisor.

By its actions, the City of Seattle didn’t just inflict deep and lasting harm on Marina and her children, they harmed all of us, the citizens of Seattle, who depend on experienced 9-1-1 operators like Marina to be there when we call with an emergency.

How is Marina fighting back? And why?

After she was fired, Marina tried resolving the matter through administrative means, but the City of Seattle refused to budge and told her the matter couldn’t be resolved absent litigation, so here she is.

After spending over 2 years doing interviews, legal research, and document requests, Marina filed a lawsuit against the City of Seattle. She did that for two reasons. First, she wants to compel the City to make her family whole. Second, she wants to discourage the City from doing this to other folks like her in the future.

This case is not about religion or the safety of the COVID vaccine; it’s about holding the City of Seattle accountable to the law. If the COVID experience taught us anything, it’s that government will use any convenient panic to expand its own power and deprive citizens of their rights. Unless we impose a cost to the government for doing this, they’ll only do it more. And worse. COVID won’t be the last pandemic. They’ve already told us that. And it won’t be the last time the government tries to violate our rights in the name of protecting us either.

Marina is not using a contingency-based attorney, so all legal fees come out of her pocket, and some of them must be paid upfront in a retainer account. Marina has found a good, experienced lawyer to represent her, but good lawyers aren’t cheap, and she doesn’t have the funds to cover this case herself, so that’s why she’s asking for your help. She was reluctant to use crowdsourcing for this since she’s never asked anyone for “charity” in her life, but when it came down to a choice between having legal representation or having none, she agreed to let others help her out.

This money will not be used to pay for Marina’s household bills. It will be used only for attorney fees and travel expenses, for when Marina must travel from her new home in the Midwest to Seattle for lawsuit-related reasons. If the case is unsuccessful, any money left over from the fund will be refunded to donors or donated to a charity supporting religious freedom. If the case is successful, all donated money will be returned or re-donated.

People leaving their contact information will be offered options for refunds or re-donation as available and will be kept apprised of the case’s progress, subject to any confidentiality rules imposed by the court.

Thank you in advance for whatever help you can give Marina. And remember: She’s fighting for all of us.