Christian Worker’s Covid Jab Suit Revived Under New SCOTUS Test

The operator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory must face bias claims for denying a Christian employee’s Covid-19 vaccine exemption request, putting him on unpaid leave, and interrogating him about his beliefs, the Sixth Circuit ruled.

The opinion Monday clarified that the US Supreme Court’s Muldrow v. City of St. Louis decision altered both the circuit’s prior test for determining when a worker alleging disparate treatment discrimination shows an adverse employment action and the circuit’s standard in religious failure-to-accommodate cases.

It also rejected that the denial of a religious accommodation, without more, supports a job retaliation claim. But the court revived ...