The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has reversed the dismissal of a Title VII religious discrimination lawsuit filed by a hospital employee who was fired for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
As the office manager at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Amanda Bazinet was required to receive the vaccine according to the hospital’s mandatory vaccination policy.
The policy provided for certain exemptions, including for medical and religious reasons. Ms. Bazinet submitted a timely application for exemption based on her religious beliefs.
She attached a letter to the form stating that she sincerely holds any religious beliefs, practices, or observances that would prevent her from receiving the vaccine, and explaining her religious objections.
“A Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and His Holy Word, the Bible,” she said, “manufacturers of currently available COVID-19 vaccines are using fetal cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. “We have developed and confirmed a vaccine.”
Based on that claim, Bazinet said that “to take a vaccine made from an aborted fetus is not only offensive, but…to be complicit in an act that is a deviation from[her]Christian faith. “I guess so,” he concluded.
The hospital denied Bazinet’s request for accommodation and terminated her employment.
She filed a lawsuit accusing the hospital of religious discrimination in violation of Title VII and Massachusetts law.
A district court dismissed the claims on its own motion, but a federal appeals board reversed.
“The complaint sufficiently alleges that taking the vaccine violates Ms. Bazinet’s religious beliefs,” the court said. “Furthermore, determining whether the hospital’s exemption of Bazinet from the vaccination requirement would create an undue hardship is not achievable at this preliminary stage of the litigation.”
Although the district court found that Ms. Bazinet’s complaint was insufficient because she merely stated that she had sincerely held religious beliefs that were contrary to hospital policy, the First Circuit Court of Appeals It said it did not consider supporting documentation in her request for accommodations.
“We find these allegations to be true for present purposes, and she has sufficiently asserted religious beliefs that are inconsistent with policy-mandated COVID-19 vaccinations,” the court said.
The court was not persuaded by the hospital’s argument that religious opposition to abortion is different from opposition to vaccines.
“Defendant Bazinet opposed vaccination based on religious beliefs that link COVID-19 vaccines to opposition to abortion,” the court said. “It doesn’t matter whether a few or many people share your religious views. For similar reasons, hospitals have been told that it is a misunderstanding to believe that Vazinet was developed from fetal tissue obtained from aborted fetuses. That fact is irrelevant at this stage of the litigation; the hospital’s challenge to the factual basis of Mr. Bazinet’s beliefs regarding vaccine development does not change the religious nature of those beliefs.
The hospital also asserted the sincerity of Ms. Bazinet’s alleged religious beliefs, noting that her accommodation request appeared to have been cut and pasted from a cookie-cutter form on the Internet.
“The fact that Hat Bazinet found information on the Internet consistent with her professed religious beliefs does not prove that her beliefs are insincere,” the court said. “The sincerity of Bazinet’s religious beliefs is a suitable subject for discovery and cannot be resolved at this early stage.”
Determining whether following Bazinet’s religious beliefs would pose an undue hardship to the hospital was also an appropriate subject for new findings.
In another religious accommodation case, the U.S. Supreme Court recently discussed what constitutes undue hardship and found it to be stricter than previously thought, the court explained.
For an undue hardship defense to be successful, an employer must show that “the burden of providing the accommodation significantly increases costs associated with conducting a particular business.”
This requires the court to consider all relevant factors, including the specific environmental considerations in question and the practical implications taking into account the nature, size and operating costs of the employer.
The court said that assessing undue hardship against the hospital requires further factual development, especially since the parties dispute this issue.
“It is unclear whether Mr. Bazinet’s religious discrimination claim will succeed or survive summary judgment,” the court concluded. “However, these claims should have gone beyond Rule 12(b)(6).”
The panel was reversed and sent back.
Click here to read the opinion in Bazinet v. Beth Israel Lahey Health, Inc.
why is it important
The First Circuit noted that Bazinet’s religious discrimination claim may not survive summary judgment, but her claims of sincerely held religious beliefs were sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Similarly, the hospital’s affirmative defense required further factual development in light of recent Supreme Court decisions that raised the standard for finding undue hardship against employers.
