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Dive Brief:
- A former consultant for The Permanente Medical Group may proceed with her lawsuit alleging that the organization unlawfully denied her request for a religious exemption from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday in a reversal of a lower court’s opinion.
- The plaintiff in Weiss v. The Permanente Medical Group, Inc. is a Christian Jew. In her exemption request, she cited Bible passages as well as Jewish law which, she said, required her to keep her body and blood uncontaminated and prohibited needle wounds “except for direct curative benefit.” TPMG provisionally approved the request but later required the plaintiff to submit further information, which she only partly provided.
- TPMG then revoked the plaintiff’s exemption and placed her on unpaid leave before firing her. A district court dismissed the case, holding that the plaintiff insufficiently provided TPMG notice of the conflict between her beliefs and the mandate. The 9th Circuit reversed, finding that the plaintiff had fulfilled this requirement. A spokesperson for TPMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dive Insight:
The 9th Circuit’s analysis turned upon the question of whether the plaintiff had sufficiently communicated to her employer how her sincerely held religious belief conflicted with its vaccine mandate.
Under both Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, religious discrimination plaintiffs must show that they have a “bona fide religious belief” that conflicts with an employment duty, the court said. The plaintiff also must have informed the employer of the conflict and be able to show that the employer threatened the employee with, or subjected them to, discriminatory treatment because of that conflict.
The district court determined that the plaintiff in Weiss expressed only general objections to the COVID-19 vaccine and that, despite the religious references the request incorporated, holding her request to be sufficient notice of religious conflict would have resulted in a “limitless excuse” for avoiding unwanted obligations.
But the 9th Circuit disagreed, holding that courts have only narrow responsibility to assess the sincerity and reasonableness of an employee’s asserted religious belief. It concluded that the plaintiff’s request identified the employee’s beliefs and described specific religious doctrines, thereby meeting the notice requirements under federal and state law.
TPMG argued that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate her conflict in part because she admitted to having received other vaccines in the past and did not explain why the COVID-19 vaccine differed from other vaccinations. The organization sent the plaintiff a list of follow-up questions that touched upon subjects such as her medication history. The plaintiff refused to answer questions that she believed sought such medical information, which she considered private.
However, TPMG’s initial approval of the plaintiff’s request acknowledged that the plaintiff’s request was religious in nature, the 9th Circuit noted. Therefore, the plaintiff plausibly alleged that she provided sufficient information so that TPMG could understand the conflict. Furthermore, the record did not indicate that TPMG ever doubted the sincerity of the plaintiff’s religious belief.
“The sincerity of the employee’s professed beliefs and whether the employee adequately notified her employer that she has a religious conflict with an employment requirement are separate inquiries,” the court said. “TPMG’s arguments blur the distinction.”
The 9th Circuit’s decision is notable given the court’s 2025 decision in a separate COVID-19 vaccine mandate lawsuit involving an Oregon health system. In Detwiler v. Mid-Columbia Medical Center the court held that an employee who opposed an employer’s proposed COVID-19 testing alternative to vaccination did so on a “personal and secular” basis rather than under a bona fide religious belief.
The Detwiler plaintiff based her objection on a personal interpretation of medical research that was “far too attenuated” from a broader religious principle, the 9th Circuit said, and the court concluded that Title VII’s religious antidiscrimination protections did not apply to such beliefs. The court later declined the plaintiff’s petition to rehear Detwiler en banc.
The court referenced Detwiler in its Weiss decision, noting that the plaintiff in Weiss expressed only a religious objection to the COVID-19 vaccine. “Thus, even if the sincerity of her beliefs were at issue, the concern addressed in Detwiler about the mingling of religious and secular motivations is not implicated here,” the court said in a footnote.
