Oregon Nurse Advances Religious Bias Suit Over Covid Vax Firing

An Oregon public hospital must face a birthing center nurse’s claim that it violated federal law when it denied her request for religious exemption from its Covid-19 vaccination requirement and fired her.

The ruling Monday may provide some insight for employers, employees, and lawyers on the impact of a recent US Supreme Court ruling on workplace religious accommodation rights.

The justices’ holding in Groff v. DeJoy, which clarified that an employer must show “substantial increased costs” to establish an undue hardship defense in religious accommodation lawsuits, requires a fact-intensive inquiry that’s typically inappropriate at the motion-to-dismiss stage of a ...