Five ex-staff sue MITRE over how HR handled vaccine beliefs
Five former employees of The MITRE Corporation have taken the company to federal court over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, accusing leadership and HR of shutting down religious accommodation requests and pushing ahead with termination anyway.
The cases, filed March 6, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, set out allegations by long‑serving professionals who say they were forced out after refusing vaccination on religious grounds and being denied what they describe as reasonable alternatives such as continued remote work. One of the filings is Ellis v. The MITRE Corporation, No. 1:26‑cv‑00970‑JRR. The court has not made any findings, and these remain allegations only.
The plaintiffs – Daniel R. Ellis, Andrea A. Kunz, Vincent DiGioia, Gloria George and Barbara M. Montella – all say they worked for MITRE between the mid‑2000s and November 2021, in roles ranging from Lead Cybersecurity Engineer to Principal Systems Engineer, Multidisciplinary Enterprise Engineer and Strategic Business Operations Analyst.
According to the complaints, MITRE introduced its own company‑wide vaccine mandate on August 16, 2021, “two months before the federal mandate through President Biden’s executive orders.” The filings say the company moved from testing for negative COVID‑19 results “to mandatory vaccine compliance before entering company spaces,” making vaccination a condition of employment unless a medical or...
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday blasted a federal judge’s order requiring it to immediately improve conditions at its ICE processing facility in Baltimore — including reducing the nu...