Fourth Circuit Allows Nurse’s Religious Discrimination Suit Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

Quick Hits

• The Fourth Circuit reinstated a religious discrimination lawsuit by a nurse who alleged wrongful discharge after her request for a religious exemption from a COVID-19 vaccination mandate was denied by her employer.
• This ruling underscores that sincerely held religious beliefs conflicting with employer policies and job requirements can be a valid basis for religious discrimination suits over a failure to accommodate.

In Barnett v. Inova Health Care Services, the Fourth Circuit disagreed with the trial court that the lawsuit could be immediately dismissed at the start. The court of appeals found that a former registered nurse had sufficiently alleged religious discrimination claims against her former employer, Inova Health Care Services—at least enough to survive an early motion to dismiss.

The court revived all three claims that alleged Inova failed to provide a reasonable accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subjected her to disparate treatment under both Title VII and the Virginia Human Rights Act (VHRA) based on her religious beliefs.

The case centers on a COVID-19 vaccine policy Inova first implemented in July 2021 to comply with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) former vaccine mandate for healthcare facilities. Inova’s policy required employees to receive the vaccine unless they had a religious or medical exemption.

Kristen Barnett, who was a registered nurse and the pediatric intensive care unit supervisor for INOVA, initially requested and was granted a medical exemption from the vaccine mandate related to lactation and nursing. In December 2021, when Inova required employees to reapply for exemptions, the nurse then requested a religious exemption, citing religious objections based on her beliefs as a devout Christian.

According to the decision, the nurse had explained that “[w]hile she was not ‘an anti-vaccine person’ and believed ‘there is a place in this world for both Science and Religion,’ she nonetheless believed ‘it would be sinful for her to consume or engage with a product such as the vaccination after having been instructed by God to abstain from it.’” Among Barnett’s religious objections was that her body is a “temple,” an argument seen by many employers with some frequency during and since the pandemic. However, after multiple requests, Inova denied her religious exemption and eventually discharged her in July 2022 for noncompliance with the policy.

Barnett also alleged that the body Inova tasked with analyzing exemption requests, the “Exemption Committee,” essentially “pick[ed] winners and losers” from the employees who sought exemptions based on whether it thought the “religious beliefs were legitimate.” She further alleged the committee favored more “prominent” or “conventional” religious beliefs in granting exemption requests and treated “certain religious beliefs as sufficiently acceptable to qualify for a COVID-19 policy exemption, while rejecting others.”

With respect to the Title VII religious accommodation claim, the district court immediately dismissed the claim after finding, among other things, that Barnett’s body-is-a-temple argument “amounted to a ‘blanket privilege … that if permitted to go forward would undermine our system of ordered liberty[.]’”

However, the Fourth Circuit reversed the dismissal of Barnett’s claims and remanded the case back to district court on the basis of having sufficiently pled facts to support plausible religious discrimination and accommodation claims. Importantly, however, the court noted that it was “take[ing] no position as to whether Barnett’s religious discrimination claims will ultimately succeed.” Basically, the court only found that she had sufficiently alleged a sincerely held religious belief, alleging that she was a “devout Christian” and that her refusal to get the vaccine was based on her religious beliefs.

Key Takeaways

With the Barnett decision, the Fourth Circuit joins a growing number of circuit courts that have not allowed early dismissal of these claims and are requiring employers to do more to demonstrate that an employee’s allegedly sincere religious belief is either not sincere or not religious. This makes handling the reasonable accommodation process more complicated and requires sufficient investigation and documentation before a religious belief can be discounted or an accommodation denied.

Still, the decisiondoes not represent a sea change in how courts will ultimately address the myriad pending religious accommodation cases working their way through the courts. While the Fourth Circuit sent the claims back to the district court for further consideration on the merits, it is yet to be seen whether Barnett’s claims will ultimately survive summary judgment or prevail at trial. However, employers may want to take note of the trends in how courts are evaluating religious discrimination and accommodation claims so they know how to best handle and resolve religious accommodation requests from employees.

Ogletree Deakins will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the COVID-19/Coronavirus, Employment Law, Healthcare, Leaves of Absence, and Workplace Safety and Health blogs as additional information becomes available.

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