Washington State police couple lose jobs over vaccine mandate despite after religious exemptions pulled

A Washington State trooper Richard Thompson and and his dispatcher wife Celina Thompson lost their jobs over the vaccine mandate, despite being initially granted religious exemptions from the shot.

"It's an argument about freedom, about constitutional rights and civil liberties, something that I've spent most of my adult life protecting for other people and are being taken away from me," Richard Thompson explained. 

The couple filed a religious exemption request, but it was denied by the state after being approved initially.

"We both have filed for moral and religious exception. We were both granted them, along with hundreds of other state patrol employees, according to our HR policy," Richard explained. "But then we were told that there would be no accommodation made for us based on the governor's state HR and what they decided."