Legacy Health Win on Staff Covid Shots Clarifies Hardship Test

A federal appeals court affirmed a ruling that Legacy Health didn’t violate anti-bias requirements when the healthcare system denied workers religious exemptions from its mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious beliefs unless doing so would cause “substantial increased costs” or “undue hardship” to the employer’s business, and Legacy showed that in the context of a 2021 predicted surge of Delta variant coronavirus cases in the health system’s clinics and hospitals in Oregon and Washington state locations, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals ...