During the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers established internal procedures to evaluate employees' requests for religious and medical-based exemptions from vaccination mandates. A new decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia) cautions employers over making accommodation decisions based on the perceived legitimacy of the employee’s expressed religious beliefs.
In Barnett v. Inova Health Care Services, the plaintiff is a nurse who applied for an exemption from her employer’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. The employer had established a committee to evaluate such requests and had granted other employees' religious-based objections to the vaccine. However, the plaintiff argued that the committee denied her request based on its perception of the sincerity of her expressed beliefs. Unlike some coworkers granted exemptions, she claimed that she did not object to all vaccines, but believed that God had told her not to obtain the specific COVID-19 shots.
The Fourth Circuit agreed, reversing a grant of summary judgment for the plaintiff. While not deciding the merits of the claim, the court stated that the plaintiff had offered sufficient evidence of disparate treatment based on religion to allow the claim to proceed to trial. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed an amicus brief supporting the plaintiff’s position and argued that federal courts should not make credibility judgments about an employee’s religious beliefs at early stages of litigation.
This case demonstrates the dangers of employers basing their responses to religious accommodation requests on an evaluation of the sincerity of the employee’s expressed beliefs. Title VII’s religious discrimination prohibitions extend well beyond established or mainstream religions, and include personal convictions that others may view as quasi-spiritual in nature. Except in unusual circumstances, employers are not well positioned to make value judgments about the legitimacy of these beliefs. Employers evaluating religious accommodation claims would be better served by assuming these beliefs are legitimate and focusing their analysis on the impacts of the request on the workplace, as well as effective alternatives to the requested accommodation.
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