Former Washington State coach Nick Rolovich, who was recently hired as an assistant by Cal, has lost his lawsuit against the university that fired him during the 2021 season for refusing to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Judge Thomas O. Rice of the Eastern District of Washington handed down a summary judgment on Monday.
Rolovich applied for a religious exemption to the mandate, which was denied, and he was later fired along with four assistant coaches. In 2022, Rolovich filed a lawsuit against the school, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Pat Chun, who was Washington State’s athletic director at the time of Rolovich’s firing.
In 2023, a federal judge ruled that Rolovich could not sue Inslee and Chun and granted a motion to dismiss the two from the case as defendants.
Rolovich alleged the school violated federal and state laws by discriminating against him based on his religious beliefs.
“Plaintiff frequently expressed secular concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine to friends, family members and coworkers,” the ruling stated. “In the thousands of pages of discovery, Plaintiff does not invoke a religious objection to the vaccine. This alone is a basis for denying Plaintiff’s claimed religious objection.”
Rolovich also claimed breach of contract, saying Washington State unjustly fired him for cause, terminating his deal with no buyout. Rolovich was in the second year of a five-year contract that paid him $3 million annually when he was fired.
Washington State argued that by refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate, Rolovich was forcing undue hardship on the school in the form of “increased travel costs, harm to recruitment and fundraising efforts and damage to WSU’s reptation and donor commitments, in addition to an increased risk of exposure of COVID-19 to student athletes.”
The judge wrote that the “overwhelming evidence” showed that Rolovich refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate would “cause undue hardship” to Washington State.
“The governor’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate was a critical measure to stem the spread of the virus during the pandemic,” Washington State said in a statement. “As the Court recognized, the overwhelming, undisputed evidence proved that allowing an unvaccinated head football coach to continue in his position during the height of the pandemic would have endangered the health and safety of the university community. Thus, the university’s decision to deny Mr. Rolovich’s exemption request and terminate his employment was consistent with the governor’s proclamation, our duty to protect the university community, and the law.”
Rolovich went 33-33 in six years as a head coach, four at Hawaii (2016-19) and two at Washington State (2020-21). He established a reputation as a successful offensive coach and helped turn around a struggling Hawaii program in his four years there, getting them to 10-5 and earning Mountain West Coach of the Year honors in 2019 before taking over at Wazzu before the 2020 season.
Since his departure from Washington State, Rolovich volunteered with a Bay Area high school football program in 2022 and in 2023 was hired as the offensive coordinator of the UFL’s Seattle Sea Dragons. But that team was discontinued when the XFL and UFL merged ahead of the 2024 season.
Join us in welcoming Senior Offensive Assistant Nick Rolovich to Bear Territory 👏🐻
🔗: https://t.co/FKfAqotnn7#GoBears | #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/mW9J0GpqFI
— Cal Football (@CalFootball) December 13, 2024
Rolovich is from the Bay Area and was a two-time junior college All-America quarterback at City College of San Francisco in 1998 and 1999. He is the third new addition to Cal’s offensive staff since Wilcox made a coordinator change on Dec. 3. The Bears hired former Auburn and Boise State head coach Bryan Harsin as offensive coordinator on Tuesday and former Utah State offensive coordinator Kyle Cefalo as receivers coach and passing game coordinator.
(Photo: Chris Gardner / Getty Images)
