Howard County’s clashes over coronavirus vaccination mandates and testing petered out several years ago — mostly. Dan Cox has stamina.

The Trump-backed attorney, who lost Maryland’s 2022 gubernatorial race to Wes Moore, is representing plaintiffs in two federal discrimination lawsuits this year that yank Howard and one of its most powerful institutions right back to the center of an old, yet familiar fault line that divided nearly every community in the country.

One complaint from Howard County Police officer Norma Hurley claims the county and department ignored her requests for a religious exemption from reporting her coronavirus vaccination status and other medical information. She said she was harassed and suspended without pay in retaliation.

The other suit is from a former employee at the Laurel-based Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, identified as Jane Doe, who claims she was fired after the institution improperly denied her request for religious accommodations from coronavirus vaccination and nasal swab testing.

Representatives for Howard County and the Police Department declined to comment on pending litigation. Applied Physics Lab representatives and Cox did not respond to requests for comment.

Cox has a history of championing Marylanders like Hurley and Doe who say their rights were violated by public health measures. He filed a lawsuit in 2020 arguing that Maryland’s stay-at-home orders were unconstitutional, and later introduced legislation to the General Assembly in an attempt to limit job-related vaccine requirements. His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

But the vibes have unmistakably shifted in 2025.

In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal funding for schools, universities and educational agencies with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. His appointed Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, removed all 17 members of a federal immunization advisory committee, canceled $500 million in funding for the development of mRNA vaccines and cut children and pregnant people from the COVID-19 vaccine schedule.

Hurley’s and Doe’s lawsuits note that they each filed complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent agency that enforces federal laws on workplace discrimination.

Within days of taking office Jan. 20, Trump moved to reshape the commission by firing two commissioners and a general counsel. He appointed his own pick to head the five-person panel, which now has three vacancies.

Days later, on Feb. 8, Hurley received a “right to sue” letter from the commission, paving the way for the 28-year veteran of the force to file her federal complaint against Howard County, Executive Calvin Ball, the Police Department and its three most recent police chiefs.

“Ms. Hurley is a healthy Hispanic woman who is a Christian with strong religious and spiritualist beliefs regarding her body, the Temple of the Holy Spirit,” the complaint states.

Beginning in 2021, the officer said she repeatedly sought a religious exemption from reporting her coronavirus vaccination status and from the county’s testing requirements, but her requests were ignored.

She was suspended for three days without pay for insubordination connected to a departmental health survey, but was later reinstated, according to the suit and attached exhibits.

Portions of the complaint and its exhibits place quotation marks around words such as vaccination, and describe the vaccines as experimental. They reference test swabs being used to sequence people’s genomes and a “scheme of mass DNA collection for the world’s largest private biometric ID library which could be used to genetically trigger disease at will.”

Such ideas have been dismissed as conspiracy theories.

According to Doe’s complaint and exhibits, her request in 2021 for a religious exemption from coronavirus vaccination and nasal swab testing was denied even as several colleagues saw similar accommodations approved. A medical exemption request also was “flippantly dismissed,” the lawsuit states.

Doe’s suit describes the decision by the Applied Physics Lab as religious discrimination and said it led to harassment, pervasive mockery of her religious faith and a hostile work environment. The suit also claims the university was negligent when another employee communicated with Doe’s primary care physician without her consent.

Cox’s past legal challenges to pandemic mandates didn’t pan out, but they also didn’t slow him down. He tried unsuccessfully to impeach Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, over the state’s pandemic response. It was also the pandemic that prompted Cox’s 2022 run for governor, he said at the time.

If his cases conclude in plaintiffs’ favor, Howard County and Johns Hopkins University could be on the hook for damages and attorney costs.