Appeals Courts Limit Employers’ Scrutiny of Religious Beliefs

Employers risk lengthy and costly litigation when they deny religious accommodation requests over doubts about the sincerity of workers’ faith-based claims, even if employees’ asserted beliefs overlap with unprotected secular ideologies.

This liability risk is evident in recent federal appellate rulings that revived lawsuits from workers who were terminated or faced other adverse actions after being denied religious exemptions from Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

Rulings from six circuit courts indicate that more of these kinds of cases will advance to the summary judgment phase or even proceed to trial because this kind of inquiry is fact-intensive, employment law attorneys said. While vaccine requirements have largely disappeared, the developing case law will eventually impact faith-related accommodation cases such as holiday observance, grooming, attire, and politically tinged workplace practices like anti-bias training.

Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit joined the Ninth, Eighth, Seventh, Sixth, and First circuits in ruling that workers have a relatively minimal burden in demonstrating a religious basis for their exemption requests at the motion to dismiss stage. Secular views don’t undermine the religious nature of a request as long as it’s partly based on religious beliefs, they said.

But the Third Circuit took the opposite stance in a ruling last year affirming the dismissal of lawsuits from eight Delaware hospital workers whose discrimination claims the court said were primarily based on secular, medical, or personal perspectives rather than genuine religious beliefs.

The recent rulings also could lead to more nuanced interpretations of what constitutes a “sincere” religious belief because courts may grapple with diverse beliefs and references to secular ideologies, attorneys said.

“The circuit courts are getting it right” because employers “have consistently referred to religious beliefs as though it can be boiled down to a specific doctrine or teaching,” even though a belief can be wholly personal and run counter to official church doctrine, said Alan J. Reinach, a civil rights lawyer and president of the Church State Council, which represents religious workers in discrimination cases.

Workers, particularly those with unconventional or lesser-known religious beliefs, may find it easier to advance claims to trial after providing context, testimony, and evidence of their religious practice that may not be apparent in the initial pleadings, he said.

In turn, employers may face longer and more complex litigation as they aren’t able to quickly dismiss claims based on an alleged lack of sincerity. But management-side lawyers said the rulings permitting cases to proceed don’t represent a significant shift in the procedural standards for evaluating the sincerity of workers’ claimed beliefs.

“These accommodation cases almost always bypass motions to dismiss because the threshold is so low,” said Sara H. Jodka of Dickinson Wright PLLC. The determination of a sincerely held belief “has usually been reserved for the motion for summary judgment stage” when all facts are fully developed, she said.

“They haven’t changed the standard,” Jodka said. “It’s just getting more attention because it’s in the context of a high-profile subject matter, which is vaccinations and religious accommodations.”

It’s also possible for employers to secure a dismissal because the complaint has to sufficiently allege a religious belief and a conflict with the workplace policy at issue, said Dawn Reddy Solowey, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. “Despite these appellate court decisions, there’s a lot more to come.”

Legal Landscape

Previously, religious bias cases under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act rarely delved into an examination of an employee’s beliefs, attorneys said. That changed as the country became more polarized over social, cultural, and political issues that infiltrated workplaces.

The rulings follow the US Supreme Court’s 2023 Groff v. DeJoy decision, which makes it harder for employers to deny religious accommodation requests unless they can show that granting them would significantly increase their business operation costs.

Before Groff, employers generally assumed the worker’s religious objections were sincere and focused on whether the accommodation would be burdensome. Since then, legal scholars said employers have increasingly scrutinized the sincerity of workers’ beliefs.

Workers are currently facing a more favorable legal landscape than in previous years, notching significant wins in recent months. These include a nearly $13 million jury award to a former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan employee and more than $7 million to six former San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District workers who were fired after refusing to get vaccinated for religious reasons.

Meanwhile, the Tenth, Ninth, Eighth, and First circuits have revived religious bias cases where employers claimed that the requested accommodations would cause undue hardship. The hardship question should be resolved after discovery, the courts said.

The Ninth and Third circuits will soon rule on the merits of religious accommodation in cases where summary judgment rulings were issued, potentially clarifying what economic and non-economic factors are burdensome to employers.

Sincerity Analysis

Guidance from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enables employers to give workers the benefit of the doubt regarding the sincerity of their beliefs.

But during the interactive process for working out a potential accommodation, the EEOC suggested that an employer may request additional information if it’s aware of objective facts that call into question the sincerity of an employee’s claimed belief.

An inquiry generally focuses on how consistent and credible an employee’s purported religious belief is, Solowey said.

But as religious accommodation case law develops, employers should evaluate requests referencing both secular and religious views individually before denying them for not being “religious” in nature, attorneys said.