A lawsuit filed Thursday claims St. Luke’s University Health Network discriminated against employees who received a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccination program by charging them more for health insurance than their co-workers. The suit says 500 employees who received a religious exemption from the network’s mandate had to pay $1,100 more for insurance per year than other employees starting in January 2022. The suit alleges, vaccinated and unvaccinated employees with medical exemptions or other deferrals from the COVID vaccine mandate received a $1,100 “premium discount” to offset the increase while unvaccinated employees with religious exemptions from the mandate did not.
Saturday is the last day for the Liberty Bell Museum in the basement of the former Zion’s Reformed United Church of Christ. The museum will be open noon to 4 Saturday before closing for good. Then the process begins of moving the collection to the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum on W. Walnut St. in Allentown. The church was sold to Resurrected Life Community Church earlier this year and lease negotiations went nowhere.
Eight Allentown police officers have been honored during a Friday morning promotion ceremony at City Hall. Mayor Matt Tuerk and Police Chief Charles Roca presided over the ceremony.
Baseball is coming to Burnside Plantation in Bethlehem on Sunday. Craig Larimer, with Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites, says it's not 2023 baseball however. "It's not necessarily the baseball we're accustomed to watching with the Phillies or IronPigs. It's more of an earlier interpretation of what baseball looked like around the Civil War era," Larimer says. And that means players old-time equipment, uniforms and rules. Tickets are $12 for adults and $5 for children under 18.
Pennsylvania's statewide Opening Day of Trout Season will be held on Saturday. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will stock approximately 3.2 million adult trout in 697 streams and 126 lakes open to public fishing. Approximately 2.3 million of those fish will be Rainbow Trout.