“They Were Lying About Everything”: The Attorney Taking New Jersey Colleges to Court Over Student COVID Vaccine Discrimination
My conversation with John Coyle, Esq., of Coyle Law Group, P.C., about his landmark lawsuits against Ramapo College and Rowan College and what they reveal about a fight that is far from over.
You’ve been working on vaccine mandate cases for years, long before COVID. How did you end up at the center of this fight?
I’ve handled vaccine mandate cases going back many years — well before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. In New Jersey, healthcare workers were required to get the flu shot, and I was already working with nurses on flu vaccine mandates before the pandemic. So when COVID came along, I was not starting from scratch. I was already working with people who had been litigating other vaccine mandates in hospital settings. When COVID-19 vaccine mandates spread from healthcare workers to students in healthcare programs, many of those students in New Jersey came to me. For some, that ultimately resulted in lawsuits.
Over the course of the pandemic and its aftermath, I have filed more than 75 lawsuits and arbitrations on behalf of people who were fired or disenrolled from programs for refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Today I want to talk about two specific cases — one against Ramapo College of New Jersey on behalf of a nursing student, and a class action against Rowan College at Burlington County on behalf of four students across several health science programs.
Tell us about the Ramapo case. Who was your client and what happened to her?
My client in the Ramapo case was not a traditional-age college student. She was an adult returning to school to earn her nursing degree. She already had an associate degree and went back specifically to complete a nursing program. She had invested years in this pursuit when she tried to file for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine requirement. What followed was a complete runaround.
This is when I first began to understand what I now call the shell game. The colleges all say it’s the clinical hospital partners who won’t grant exemptions — that their hands are tied. But the hospitals, when you actually contact them, say the opposite: that it’s the school’s responsibility to evaluate and grant the exemption, and that if the school grants it, the hospital will honor it.
In my client’s case, Ramapo College claimed she could not attend her clinical rotations unvaccinated. I contacted all of the potential clinical facilities where she could be placed. Most of them agreed that her exemption could be accommodated. They explained that they accommodate employees with religious and medical exemptions all the time. But the college wasn’t interested in that reality. They claimed she was undermining the integrity of the program and disenrolled her. She lost her federal financial aid. She was left with loans and bills — and years of work toward a degree she couldn’t finish. It really put her in a difficult spiral.
The lawsuit was filed in Bergen County Superior Court in July 2023. We ultimately resolved it in early 2026 with a six-figure settlement paid by Ramapo College of New Jersey. The terms of the settlement are public because it involves a state institution. While there was no formal admission of liability — that is standard in settlements — when a public college writes a six-figure check, their actions speak for themselves.
While you were settling the Ramapo case, the Rowan case was already underway. How did that begin, and who are the plaintiffs?
While I was working through the Ramapo matter, I learned that the exact same thing was happening at Rowan College at Burlington County in South Jersey. I was retained to represent four different students — two who were disenrolled in 2021 and two who were disenrolled in 2023. They are not all nursing students. They represent several health science disciplines: nursing and dental hygiene among them. Together they filed a class action complaint in Mercer County Superior Court, and the case has been litigated as Whartenby et al. v. Rowan College at Burlington County (Docket No. MER-L-1566-23).
What strikes me about this group is the range of people affected. One plaintiff was a 19-year-old who had completed two years of general education courses and been formally accepted into the nursing program before being disenrolled. Another was a mother of two in her forties, working toward a career in dental hygiene while raising her children and running a household — a woman who had already successfully obtained religious exemptions for her own children from New Jersey’s school vaccination requirements, exemptions the state had accepted without issue. Two other plaintiffs were nursing students who had been on the Dean’s List throughout their time at Rowan when the COVID vaccination mandate hit, and were removed with just one semester left to complete their degrees.
The amended complaint details some remarkable exchanges with Rowan administrators. What did the school actually tell these students?
The documented communications are extraordinary. When one plaintiff emailed the nursing department requesting the official forms for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine requirement, the response from the nursing department was blunt: “We are not able to offer religious or medical exemptions for the COVID vaccine. At this time all students are required to get the vaccine.” Full stop.
When another plaintiff submitted a formal religious exemption request — a thoughtful, detailed letter grounded in his sincerely held religious beliefs — the Dean of Health Sciences responded in writing within 23 minutes. Twenty-three minutes. The response told him that the college does not recognize religious exemptions just for the COVID vaccine, that students cannot write their own exemption letters, and that the only students who might qualify for a religious exemption are those who can prove they have never had a vaccine in their entire lives — and must provide a letter from the head of their church. That standard is explicitly prohibited by controlling law from the United States Supreme Court all the way down through the New Jersey courts. The law is clear that a religious exemption is evaluated based on the sincerely held beliefs of the individual — not on whether they have been perfectly vaccine-free since birth, and not based on letters from clergy.
When another student — a dental hygiene applicant — showed up for orientation and went to the Student Life Center to ask about her exemption, she was first told by an admissions employee that Rowan does accept religious exemptions. When a supervisor was brought in, she clarified that the institution accepts exemptions — but that the dental hygiene program does not. Then, driving home from orientation, this student received a phone call from a health sciences coordinator who yelled at her: “WE DO NOT ACCEPT RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS.” When the student began to object, she was told they had dealt with lawyers before and it wouldn’t matter.
And throughout all of this, the college’s official position was: it’s not us, it’s the clinical sites. They don’t allow exemptions. Our contracts require it.
But that claim fell apart when the students actually contacted the clinical sites themselves, didn’t it?
Completely fell apart. Rowan repeatedly told students that their clinical partner, Virtua Health, would not permit unvaccinated students at their facilities — that there were no exemptions of any kind. Two of my plaintiffs actually picked up the phone and called Virtua’s HR department to verify this. In both cases, Virtua’s response was the same: it is the responsibility of the affiliated school to evaluate and grant exemptions. Virtua would not be evaluating exemptions for students or contractors — that was Rowan’s job. And if Rowan granted the exemption, Virtua would honor it.
One plaintiff forwarded this confirmation from Virtua directly back to Rowan. The college’s response was to drop him from his nursing courses within days.
And what we found in discovery made it even worse. Rowan actually possessed an Influenza Vaccination Religious Exemption Form for non-employed practitioners from Virtua — a form that Virtua had been using for years. Rowan had that document and was still telling students that no exemptions were possible at Virtua. That is not a misunderstanding. That is a knowing falsehood.
I will say this plainly: no hospital has a contract that says “I am going to violate state and federal civil rights laws.” No such contract exists.
You mentioned that discovery revealed internal communications at Rowan. What did you find?
What we learned through discovery is that this was not bureaucratic confusion. It was a deliberate policy. Internal emails showed a dean communicating with other department heads and staff, expressing frustration with students seeking exemptions — and instructing employees not to give any information to students or lawyers calling about where accommodations were being made. The message was: don’t tell anyone where exemptions are being granted, don’t give lawyers any information that could help their clients. That’s not a clerical error. That is an institution actively working to deny students information they are legally entitled to.
What law underpins these cases? Why does New Jersey law give you such strong footing here?
The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination — the NJLAD — is the backbone of both cases. It is among the most protective civil rights statutes in the country, and it explicitly applies to educational institutions as places of public accommodation. Under the NJLAD, colleges are required to engage in a bona fide effort to accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs. They cannot simply refuse to consider exemption requests. They cannot impose discriminatory standards for evaluating those requests. And they cannot treat health science students differently from the general student body without a legitimate legal justification.
That last point is critical. By 2023, Rowan was no longer requiring COVID-19 vaccination for general education students. The mandate had ended for the broader campus. But health science students were still being expelled under the claim that clinical partners demanded it — a claim those same clinical partners denied. The college was applying a two-tiered system: general students had rights under the NJLAD, and health science students, apparently, did not.
Federal law is somewhat more complicated — there are questions about whether clinical training counts as covered employment under Title VII. But my reading is that when training is mandatory as a condition of your program, it falls within the coverage of federal discrimination law, just as a required internship or apprenticeship would. And under New Jersey law, I don’t even have to argue that point. The NJLAD explicitly covers the educational context. The argument is clear.
Where does the Rowan lawsuit stand right now?
The case is at a critical juncture. Rowan failed to comply with the court’s discovery orders — they did not produce the outstanding discovery they were obligated to provide. As a result, I filed a motion, and in April 2026 the court granted an order striking the defendants’ answer without prejudice. The judge’s handwritten statement of reasons was direct: although defense counsel stated their intention to supply the outstanding discovery in advance of the return date of the motion, there was nothing in the motion record to indicate that this was actually done. Motion granted.
So Rowan’s answer has been suppressed. They have now filed a submission seeking to reinstate their answer, and we are currently before the court on that motion. The question is whether they will be permitted to re-enter their defense. Either way, the dynamic tells you something important. Why did Rowan resist producing discovery for so long? Because the discovery proves that everything they said all along was a lie. The question answers itself. If your position was lawful and your communications were honest, you produce the documents.
Separately, we are also moving forward on motions in limine in advance of trial. The case has a pretrial information exchange on file as of May 2026. We have a substantial exhibit list for each plaintiff — emails, account summaries showing the tuition they paid, records of their academic standing, their exemption requests, and the communications from Rowan administrators. We also have deposition testimony from the Health Science Department Coordinator that we intend to use at trial.
Two of your Rowan plaintiffs re-enrolled after being kicked out, and were then removed again. Can you explain what happened?
Yes, and it really illustrates how deep and ongoing this problem is. Two of the plaintiffs who were expelled in 2021 actually went back to Rowan and re-enrolled — I suppose they were optimists, or gluttons for punishment, depending on your perspective. By 2025 and 2026, they were then kicked out of the nursing program again. Same issue. Same shell game. Different year.
This is what people don’t understand: the public perception is that COVID vaccine mandates are over. If you asked a thousand people on the street, nearly all of them would say of course there are no more mandates. They are wrong. Mandates still exist in health science programs across the country. In every state. The free states of Texas and Florida included. It is not as widespread as it once was, but it has not gone away. These students are living it in 2026.
What does the Ramapo settlement mean for the Rowan case going forward?
Technically, from a legal standpoint, a settlement is not binding precedent. There was no court ruling on the merits, no admission of liability. That is what a settlement is — a compromise. But when a public college pays a six-figure sum to resolve a case of this nature, it sends a message that any rational institution should hear. It means the case was strong enough that the college preferred to write a very substantial check rather than have all of its internal communications, decisions, and justifications exposed in a trial.
That six-figure payment by a New Jersey public college, in a case grounded in the NJLAD, in the context of COVID vaccine religious exemptions for health science students — that matters. It doesn’t bind a judge in the Rowan case, but it demonstrates that these are not frivolous claims. They are meritorious. And juries and judges in New Jersey are going to see what Rowan’s own emails say.
What do you want people to take away from these cases?
That when people stand up, it is to be greatly admired — even knowing there may be years of pain ahead. These are hardworking adults with families, mortgages, children, bills. They are not ideologues. They are people who had a sincere religious belief and were entitled, under the law, to have that belief considered. Instead they were lied to, browbeaten, and expelled. Some lost federal financial aid. Some were left with debt for programs they could not complete. One of my clients was driving home from orientation — the first day of her program — and pulled over on the side of the road in tears after being yelled at by a college administrator.
Health science students are a captive population. They cannot get their degrees without completing their clinical hours. They cannot get licensed for their chosen careers without those degrees. The colleges know this, and some of them have exploited it. They have bet on the fact that these students would not push back — that the cost of fighting was too high, and that compliance was easier than resistance.
What I hope these cases show is that the cost of fighting can be worth it. That the law is on the side of students who hold sincere religious beliefs. That the shell game can be exposed. And that when you send a lawyer a letter showing that the hospital the school blamed will actually accommodate you — and the school kicks you out anyway — there are courts in New Jersey that will take that seriously.
The Rowan lawsuit is ongoing. There are four plaintiffs, and behind them, the complaint alleges, are potentially hundreds of others who were similarly discriminated against by this institution between 2021 and the present. We intend to make sure their stories are told.
John D. Coyle, Esq. is a partner at Coyle Law Group, P.C., based in Morris Plains, New Jersey. He can be reached at jcoyle@coylelawgroup.com. The case Whartenby et al. v. Rowan College at Burlington County is pending in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Mercer County, Docket No. MER-L-1566-23. The Ramapo College settlement (Swander v. Ramapo College of New Jersey et al., Docket No. BER-L-3950-23) was finalized in March 2026.
This article is based on a recorded interview with attorney John Coyle, supplemented with details drawn from publicly available court filings including the Amended Class Action Complaint (October 26, 2023), the Plaintiffs’ Pretrial Information Exchange (May 4, 2026), the Order Striking Defendants’ Answer (April 13, 2026), the Plaintiffs’ Motion in Limine, and the fully executed Settlement Agreement and Release in the Ramapo matter.
Great piece! These students and their attorney are heroes.
Fight on! Thank you!