Given the slow progress of civil litigation in the U.S., federal courts continue to hear challenges to employer vaccination mandates imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to 2023, employers generally held the upper hand in defending the use of vaccine mandates. That year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Groff v. DeJoy decision, which substantially changed the legal test for determining religious accommodation claims under Title VII. Prior to that decision, employers could reject an accommodation request if it presented more than a de minimus impact on the business. Post-Groff, these determinations are more akin to those made for disability-related accommodations under the ADA. The employers must provide such measures absent an undue hardship or direct threat.
The impact of Groff can be seen in more recent federal court decisions. These courts no longer accept general employer assertions about the potential risk of infection from unvaccinated employees. In order to prevail, employers need to demonstrate an actual danger based on the employee’s specific job duties and contact with vulnerable persons. Also, employers that summarily rejected religious exemption requests to vaccine mandates have had a difficult time justifying those decisions in the absence of an individualized analysis of the request and potential alternatives.
In the health care setting, this change in the legal standard for reviewing religious accommodation cases means that it can be difficult to justify a vaccine mandate outside of a clinical setting where the employee is in close contact with potentially vulnerable patients. One bright spot for employers has been courts' apparent willingness to explore the distinction between employee objections to vaccinations resulting from religious reasons, as compared to those that appear based on political views or generalized fear of the health effects of the vaccines. In a number of cases, federal courts have dismissed religious accommodation claims after concluding that the employee’s professed beliefs do not require rejection of vaccines.
Although vaccine mandates outside of the health care industry have largely ended, these cases establish guidance for employers faced with future pandemics, and those that deal with comparable religious accommodation requests from employees.
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