Published June 19, 2024
On June 19, 2024, EPPC scholar Rachel N. Morrison filed an amicus brief in Barnett v. Inova Health Care Services, urging the Fourth Circuit to reverse the district court’s dismissal of Kristen Barnett’s Title VII claims, which she brought after her employer, Inova Health Care Services, denied her a religious accommodation to its COVID-19 vaccination policy.
The brief, filed on behalf of Morrison and former EEOC General Counsel Sharon Fast Gustafson as experts in religion-related employment discrimination, explained Title VII’s religious discrimination and accommodation standards and how the district court departed from those legal standards.
As summarized in the brief:
Under Title VII, when a workplace policy violates an employee’s sincerely held religious belief, an employer must reasonably accommodate the employee’s religious belief if it can do so without undue hardship to the employer’s business.
The EEOC—the federal agency tasked with enforcing Title VII—has set out what is required of a religious accommodation, including what beliefs and practices qualify as religious.
Ms. Barnett, a devout Christian, requested a religious accommodation to Inova’s COVID-19 vaccination policy. On the application form, she provided a detailed explanation of her religious objection based on reading holy Scripture and prayer. She explained that according to Scripture her body is a “temple” of God and that she believes that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine “would be violating a sacred trust to honor God with [her] body.”
Nevertheless, Inova denied Ms. Barnett’s request formulaically: “Your request did not meet the criteria for exemption, did not demonstrate a religious belief that conflicts with the vaccination requirement, or could not be accommodated in your role without posing an undue hardship to Inova’s operations.” Ms. Barnett appealed, elaborating on her religious objection, but Inova again denied her religious accommodation request and terminated her employment.
Ms. Barnett sued Inova raising Title VII failure to accommodate and disparate treatment claims. The district court held that Ms. Barnett’s failure to accommodate claim “would amount to a blanket privilege and that if permitted to go forward would undermine our system of ordered liberty.” The district court also dismissed her disparate treatment claim because the facts were duplicative with the accommodation claim and a comparator was required to be pled.
But this is not what Title VII requires. Title VII requires reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious beliefs. There is no “blanket privilege” consideration. Further, denials of religious accommodation requests can form the basis of disparate treatment claims. Comparators are not required…
By departing from Title VII’s legal standards, the district court erred by ruling that Ms. Barnett’s beliefs were not religious and by dismissing her Title VII failure to accommodate and disparate treatment claims.
The brief concluded by urging the Fourth Circuit to reverse the district court’s error.
The brief was featured by Law360 here.
Rachel N. Morrison is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project. An attorney, her legal and policy work focuses on religious liberty, health care rights of conscience, the right to life, nondiscrimination, and civil rights.
