During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers attempting to enforce safety policies faced resistance from employees opposed to vaccination mandates. In many cases, employees claimed that taking the vaccine violated their religious beliefs. Some companies doubted the sincerity of these religious claims, while others believed that the risks posed by unvaccinated workers outweighed the employees' entitlement to an accommodation.

Following years of subsequent litigation and new Supreme Court guidance on religious accommodation obligations, federal courts appear to be coalescing around a legal standard to be used when reviewing vaccination accommodation claims. Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals joined the Eighth and Sixth Circuits in holding that employees' combination of political or other non-religious reasons for refusing vaccines does not eliminate their ability to claim a religious basis for their refusal to be vaccinated.

In two companion cases, the employees provided written exemption requests to their employers. In both cases, the employees quoted scripture to support their requests, but also provided non-religious claims about the safety and toxicity of the COVID-19 vaccine. The district courts determined that the plaintiffs had dressed health objections to the vaccine in biblical language, and that this did not establish the basis for a religious accommodation under Title VII.

The Seventh Circuit disagreed, concluding that the plaintiffs had a relatively minimal burden of pleading a religious basis for their exemption requests. While courts may make a later factual determination that the employee did not have a sincere religious basis for the accommodation request, these lawsuits will not fail at the initial stages of litigation due to mixed reasons provided by the plaintiffs.

These decisions mean that employers are less likely to dispose of litigation over vaccine mandates at the early stages of the lawsuits. Attorneys advising employees about seeking exemptions are likely to emphasize the need to articulate a religious basis for their objections even if they have already claimed other reasons behind their objections. While vaccine mandates have largely disappeared outside of the health care industry, this reasoning could be applied to other situations where the employer suspects primarily secular reasons for an employee’s request for a modification of workplace policies.

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