Last month, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of all but two claims filed by employees who claimed that the hospital employer’s initial blanket denial of their religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine constituted religious discrimination in violation of Title VII and the Ohio Civil Rights Act. Saval v. MetroHealth System, No. 23-3672 (6th Cir. 3/20/24). The employer had reversed its decision and ultimately granted all of the religious exemption requests. Thus, the employees who remained employed never suffered any concrete injury to justify litigation from “conclusory” allegations of the emotional distress caused over 36 days while they were forced choose between their jobs and their religious convictions or from the employer’s ability to reverse course again in the future. Several of the employees had resigned before the employer denied the exemption requests, and thus, also lacked any injury from the employer’s initial denial decision. However, two employees could sue for disparate treatment and failure to accommodate when they resigned more than 18 days after their requests were denied even though the employer had granted some medical exemption requests.
According to the Court’s opinion, in August 2021, the
hospital announced that all employees needed to obtain the vaccine by the end
of October unless they requested a valid medical or religious exemption. The employer received hundreds of exemption
requests and stayed the compliance deadline for those employees while it worked
through each of the requests. While the
employer granted some medical exemption requests, it denied all of the
religious exemption requests in February on the grounds that the employees
could not perform their jobs remotely, no reasonable accommodation was
available and it would be an undue hardship to the employer. It gave the employees 45 days to comply, but
36 days later, abruptly changed course on March 15 and granted all of the
exemption requests. Nine employees resigned
before that 36th day and filed suit.
They were joined by 36 other employees who remained employed by the
hospital. The trial court granted the
employer’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing (i.e., were still employed
and suffered no injury from the temporary denial) and failure to state a claim. The Court affirmed the dismissal for all but
the first two plaintiffs who had resigned after their exemptions had been
denied but before the hospital reversed its decision.
The Court affirmed dismissal for lack of standing because 36
employees did not suffer any injury from the temporary denial of the exemption
requests. It rejected their claims of
mental anguish from having to chose between their jobs and their religious
beliefs and threat that the employer could reverse its decision again in the
future. The Court found their allegations
of past distress to be too conclusory to be actionable and “fears about a
future denial were ‘contingent on future events that may never come to pass,
which is a much ‘too speculative’ state of affairs ‘to satisfy the
well-established requirement that threatened injury must be ‘certainly
impending.’”
The Court analyzed the allegations of the first nine employees
to determine whether they stated valid claims for constructive discharge --
i.e., whether they were forced to resign.
Six of these nine could not establish constructive discharge because
they had resigned before their exemption requests had been denied in
February. An additional employee’s claim
was denied because she had never filed a formal exemption request.
The Court’s majority agreed that the first two plaintiffs stated
valid claims for constructive discharge because they requested exemptions,
those exemptions were denied, they were denied the right to appeal and they
were given a date to comply or be fired.
The trial court had determined that they resigned prematurely (albeit
more than halfway through the 45 day period), but the Court disagreed.
The Court also reversed the trial court that these
plaintiffs failed to state a claim for religious discrimination: “Plaintiffs 1
and 2 allege [the employer] failed to accommodate their religious beliefs by
blanket-denying their vaccine exemption requests. They also assert that [it]
treated them differently because of their religion.” The first two employees “just need to
plausibly allege that they were denied a religious accommodation and treated
differently because of their religion.”
Further, these two employees alleged a plausible claim of
failure to accommodate. “The heart of
the failure-to-accommodate claim is that an employer discharges (or otherwise
discriminates against) an employee for failing a job-related requirement
instead of abiding by its “statutory obligation to make reasonable
accommodation for the religious observances” of its employees.”
The Court also found that these two employees plausibly
plead a disparate treatment case. They “alleged
that [the employer] categorically denied all religious exemption requests while
granting some nonreligious exemption requests—that is, that [it] treated them
differently with respect to a condition of employment because of their
religion.”
In concurring, one judge questioned whether this was really
a constructive discharge case when the employees had been told when they would
be terminated and could have sought a preliminary injunction to prevent an
unlawful job termination.
NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and alert
you of recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and does
not apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead to
different results. Information here can change or be amended without notice.
Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If you have
any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or retain
an employment attorney.
