Baruch College Professor Wins 2024 Hoeber Memorial Award for Excellence in Research

Baruch College Professor Wins 2024 Hoeber Memorial Award for Excellence in Research

October 2, 2024

Debbie Kaminer, a professor in the Department of Law at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, was honored with the 2024 Hoeber Memorial Award for Excellence in Research for her article, "Vaccines in the Time of Covid-19: Using Vaccine Mandates to Teach About the Legal and Ethical Regulation of Business."

The Hoeber award, given in memory of prominent business law professor Ralph C. Hoeber, is granted annually recognizing the best article of the year published in the Journal of Legal Studies Education.

Professor Kaminer, who obtained her law degree from Columbia University School of Law, teaches courses about employment discrimination, business ethics, and religion and the law.

In a recent interview, Kaminer spoke about her research and how it impacts society.

What got you interested in this research area?

I have been researching employment discrimination and specifically religious accommodation in the workplace for a number of years. During the Covid pandemic, I began to focus on vaccine mandates, including religious objections to mandatory vaccination.

When I saw that my students were interested in these mandates, I decided to use the question "Can government and businesses mandate the Covid-19 vaccine?" as the starting point to teach about business law and ethics.

Using this question throughout the semester expands students' ability to analyze how the complexity association with the legal regulation of business in the United States applies to real-world business dilemmas.

It also develops students' working knowledge of specific areas of business law and improves students' ability to examine business dilemmas from competing ethical perspectives.

What have you learned completing this research?

I found this research quite interesting since it involved applying the laws of religious accommodation, which was my previous area of expertise, in a different context. I was somewhat surprised to see the extent to which employees claimed religious objections to vaccine mandates.

How does your research apply to the real world?

The Covid pandemic wreaked havoc on American society, causing death, illness, and economic suffering. Vaccine mandates became an extremely important topic since vaccination was the best way to both limit the spread of Covid and the severity of the disease in those who become ill.

Vaccine mandates are therefore an engaging question to use as a starting point for teaching about business law and ethics. While many private employers may no longer have Covid vaccine mandates, other employers such as health care facilities, nursing homes, and some schools do still have a number of vaccine mandates in place.

Cases involving religious objections to vaccine mandates are continuing to work their way through the courts.

Are you currently working on other research projects?

I am on a Sabbatical this semester and working on two articles. The first is "The Roberts Court and Religion: How the Supreme Court is Using Title VII to Diminish Workers' Rights." This article focuses on the United States Supreme Courts' decision last year in Groff v. DeJoy.

This case rewrote the rules of religious accommodation in the workplace and the article specifically looks at what this decision means for religious employees' coworkers.

The second article I am working on is "Title VII and Religious Accommodation: The Impact of Groff v. DeJoy on Religious Minorities." My prior research on religious accommodation has been cited in multiple briefs to the United States Supreme Court.

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