The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed dismissal of a Title VII religious discrimination claim filed by a hospital employee who was terminated for not getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
As an executive office manager at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Amanda Bazinet was required to obtain the vaccine pursuant to the hospital’s mandatory vaccination policy.
The policy provided for certain exemptions, including for medical and religious reasons. Bazinet timely submitted a request for an exemption based on her religious beliefs.
She indicated on the form that she maintained sincerely held religious beliefs, practices or observances that prevented her from receiving the vaccine and attached a letter describing her religious objection.
A “Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and His holy word, the Bible,” she alleged that the makers of the “COVID-19 vaccines currently available developed and confirmed their vaccines using fetal cell lines, which originated from aborted fetuses.”
Based on that allegation, Bazinet concluded that “[p]artaking in a vaccine made from aborted fetuses [would make her] complicit in an action that not only offends, but … is an aberration to [her] Christian faith.”
The hospital denied Bazinet’s request for an accommodation and terminated her employment.
She sued, accusing the hospital of religious discrimination in violation of Title VII and Massachusetts state law.
On its own motion, the district court dismissed the claims, but the federal appellate panel reversed.
“The complaint sufficiently alleged that taking the vaccine would violate Bazinet’s religious beliefs,” the court wrote. “Moreover, determining whether an undue hardship would result from the Hospital excusing Bazinet from the vaccine requirement cannot be accomplished at this preliminary stage of the litigation.”
While the district court found Bazinet’s complaint wanting because she simply stated that she has sincerely held religious beliefs which placed her in conflict with the hospital’s policy, the First Circuit said it failed to consider the supporting documentation in her accommodation request.
“Accepting those allegations as true for present purposes, she has sufficiently pleaded a religious belief that conflicts with receiving the COVID-19 vaccine as required by the policy,” the court said.
The court was not persuaded by the hospital’s argument that religious opposition to abortion was different from an opposition to vaccines.
“Bazinet … grounded her objection to taking the vaccine in a religious belief connecting the COVID-19 vaccine to opposition to abortion,” the court said. “Whether few or many share that religious view is irrelevant. For similar reasons, it is also irrelevant at this stage of the litigation that the Hospital tells us that Bazinet is mistaken in believing that the COVID-19 vaccines were developed from fetal tissue obtained from aborted fetuses. That the Hospital disputes Bazinet’s factual foundation for her belief about the development of the vaccines does not change the religious character of the belief.”
The hospital also pushed back on the sincerity of Bazinet’s alleged religious belief, pointing out that her request for accommodation appeared to have been largely cut and pasted from cookie-cutter forms on the internet.
“[T]hat Bazinet found information on the internet which coincided with her professed religious beliefs does not establish that her beliefs are insincere,” the court wrote. “The sincerity of Bazinet’s religious belief is a proper subject for discovery, and it cannot be resolved at this early stage.”
Determining whether accommodating Bazinet’s religious beliefs would create an undue hardship for the hospital became another proper subject for discovery.
In another case about religious accommodations, the U.S. Supreme Court recently discussed what constitutes an undue hardship, clarifying that it is more rigorous than previously thought, the court explained.
A successful undue hardship defense requires the employer to show that “the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”
This requires courts to take into account all relevant factors, including the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in light of the nature, size and operating cost of an employer.
The undue hardship evaluation for the hospital required further factual development, the court said, particularly as the parties disputed the issue.
“Whether Bazinet’s religious discrimination claims will succeed or even survive summary judgment is uncertain,” the court concluded. “But these claims should have advanced past Rule 12(b)(6).”
The panel reversed and remanded.
To read the opinion in Bazinet v. Beth Israel Lahey Health, Inc., click here.
Why it matters
While the First Circuit noted that Bazinet’s religious discrimination claim may not succeed summary judgment, her assertion of sincerely held religious beliefs was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Similarly, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling heightening the standard for establishing an undue hardship on an employer, the hospital’s affirmative defense required further factual development.
