U.S. Appellate Court for the Seventh Circuit Affirms Discharge of Employee Who Refused Compliance with Orders Citing Religious Objection
In Jackson v. Methodist Health Services Corp., Case No. 23-1464 (7th Cir. 2024), the Court weighed whether a health care system violated the religious freedoms of an employee who refused COVID testing as an alternative to vaccination against the disease.
Amanda Jackson argued that her sincere beliefs and moral conscience were being violated by requiring her to engage in regular asymptomatic testing in lieu of vaccination, and that placing her on unpaid leave and ultimately terminating her employment after she refused violated her rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution. According to the Court, “Jackson cited two principal reasons for that conclusion: (1) she was opposed to ‘health care procedures which she, a competent adult, does not believe are medically necessary’, and (2) she ‘holds sincere beliefs that prevent her from submitting to or participating in workplace procedures which arbitrarily discriminate between employees on the basis of health care choices made pursuant to freedom of conscience.’”
But the Court did not find her arguments persuasive, noting that her general disdain for compliance with the ordered procedure was insufficient to establish a particular religious tenet at odds with the testing requirement, and further reasoning that she established no religious practice with which testing would interfere. The Court also noted that the testing requirement applied to those who had only had a single shot of the two shot vaccination protocol, and that mere differential treatment on the basis of health care choices was not enough to compel the result that the employee’s rights were illegally burdened absent a tie to a particular religious practice or belief.
The court held that “The employer’s duty under Title VII is to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs. In this case, [the Employer] accommodated Jackson’s religious beliefs by exempting her from the vaccine requirement. Conditioning the exemption on weekly testing, a requirement imposed by the governor’s executive order, was reasonable.” (citing Sutton v. Providence St. Joseph Med. Ctr., 192 F.3d 826, 830 (9th Cir. 1999) (“courts agree that an employer is not liable under Title VII when accommodating an employee’s religious beliefs would require the employer to violate federal or state law,” because “the existence of such a law establishes ‘undue hardship’”); among others.
Employees seeking accommodation have a duty to explain to the employer how the requirements of the employer’s job burden the employee’s rights or practice. The case serves as an important reminder to educational institutions that while they must contemplate and engage in interactive communications with employees seeking reasonable accommodation, such accommodation need not unduly burden the entity, and the entity need not adopt an accommodation “that would place it on the “razor’s edge” of legal liability (citing Flanagan v. Ashcroft, 316 F.3d 728, 729–30 (7th Cir. 2003).”