By: Erin Chow, Lukas Huldi, and Michael Steinberg

Seyfarth Synopsis: In a dispute over workplace vaccination requirements, a federal district court in Oregon joined a growing trend in workplace vaccination litigation when it ruled that a plaintiff’s allegations of religious conflict with vaccination are sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss even when religious motives are coupled with secular concerns over vaccine safety.

Background & Holding

To get past a motion to dismiss and unlock the door to discovery, Plaintiffs asserting religious discrimination claims under federal or state law must allege facts suggesting that their religious beliefs or practices conflicted with a requirement of their employment.  But what beliefs count as “religious”?  The issue arises frequently in cases challenging termination for non-compliance with an employer’s COVID vaccine policy because employees’ claims of religious conflict are often interspersed with entirely secular concerns—such as fear of harm from the vaccine or philosophical opposition to mandates—that undermine the plaintiff’s claim that her objections were religiously motivated.  Many courts across the country have thus wrestled with the question of whether, and to what extent, an employee’s articulation of secular objections to vaccination alongside purported religious concerns may be fatal to surviving a Rule 12 motion.  In December 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon entered the fray and concluded that a plaintiff may properly plead a sincere religious belief even when the plaintiff has also asserted secular beliefs.  French v. St. Charles Health Sys., Inc., No. 6:23-cv-01021-MTK, 2024 WL 5010502 (D. Or. Dec. 6, 2024).

In French, four plaintiffs sued their former employer, St. Charles Health System, Inc., for employment discrimination under state and federal law after their religious exemption requests from their employer’s vaccination policy were denied.

When one plaintiff initially sought a religious exemption to the vaccination requirement, she informed her employer that she believes her “body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” and that taking a vaccine that might be harmful to her body was inconsistent with that belief.  The plaintiff also expressed concerns over the vaccine’s potential side effects because it had not been tested for long.

St. Charles moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing that the plaintiff had not adequately alleged that she held a bona fide religious belief in conflict with the vaccine mandate for two reasons: (1) her allegations about her faith were merely conclusory, and (2) her statements about potential side effects betrayed a secular concern devoid of legal protection.

The court first determined that the allegations were adequately detailed for this stage of the proceedings.  The plaintiff had explained in a letter to her employer that her beliefs were informed by her understanding of a specific passage of Scripture.  Moreover, courts tend to accept well-pleaded assertions of sincere religious belief, particularly at the motion to dismiss stage.

The court next turned to St. Charles’s assertion that the plaintiff’s beliefs were secular and could therefore not support a claim of religious discrimination.  It concluded that even though the plaintiff had asserted secular concerns about the vaccine’s safety, they did not detract from her religious motivation to avoid the vaccine.  The plaintiff’s reasons for avoiding the vaccine were still, as a whole, religious rather than secular; their overlap with her medical beliefs did not push them from the sphere of legal protection.  Thus, French’s religious discrimination claim survived her employer’s motion to dismiss.

Taking all the plaintiff’s factual allegations as true—as is required when considering a 12(b)(6) motion—the court concluded that she had plausibly alleged that she had a religious belief that conflicted with an employment duty because the vaccine mandate required a medical intervention inconsistent with her religious beliefs.

Practical Takeaways for Employers

The French decision joins a growing body of case law in vaccine litigation concluding that the articulation of secular beliefs amongst religious ones is not necessarily fatal to the employee’s religious discrimination claim at the pleadings stage.  For example, the Seventh Circuit found that an employee’s claim that “the [COVID] vaccines could pose a danger to [her] body in the form of blood clots or heart inflammation” and another employee’s claim that she did not “trust the information and long-term effects” of COVID vaccines because they were “developed in a rush” did not undermine their stated religious beliefs at the Rule 12 stage.  Passarella v. Aspirus, Inc., 108 F.4th 1005, 1007-08, 10 (7th Cir. 2024). 

In view of the relatively lenient standard that applies at the Rule 12 stage, employers should carefully evaluate the language of the particular request at issue in deciding whether a motion to dismiss on the ground that the plaintiff’s asserted objections to vaccination were secular rather than religious is a worthwhile endeavor.  Employers should note that even if an employee’s request for an exemption or accommodation to a COVID vaccine policy contains references to secular rationales like vaccine safety and efficacy, their employee may still show a religious conflict with their vaccine policy so long as the request sufficiently invokes a specific religious belief or practice.  Before rejecting such a request on account of its secular rather than religious nature, employers should seek legal advice.

Employers should also bear in mind that even though the existence of a sincere religious conflict may be a difficult issue to dispose of at the pleadings stage, summary judgment motions have had much more success.  Employers may still prevail at summary judgment by taking an assertive, proactive, and strategic approach in discovery to develop a record that demonstrates the absence of an employee’s religious conflict with an employer’s vaccine policies.

While the height of the pandemic recedes into the more distant past, litigation arising from employers’ pandemic-era policies persists, and the law in this arena continues to develop every day.  The Employment Litigation and Cultural Flashpoints teams at Seyfarth are steeped in these ongoing developments and stand ready to assist employers as they navigate the changing landscape.