Case updates this week:

October 23: In Lewis-Williams et al. v. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a jury awarded former employees a $7.8 million judgment against Defendant San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (“BART”). The Plaintiffs’ alleged that BART failed to accommodate their requests for religious exemption in the fall of 2021, which resulted in the loss of their jobs. The Plaintiffs’ claimed that while BART did initially grant their vaccination exemptions, BART did not give them the option to get regularly tested for COVID or to work from home. BART contended that its vaccine policy was instituted in connection with public health guidance at the time and accommodating unvaccinated employees would have caused an increased health risk and undue hardship to the Defendant. The jury disagreed with BART’s reasoning, and each former employee was awarded over $1 million in damages.

October 24: In Wilder et al. v. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri Western Division granted in part and denied in part Defendant Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC (“FM&T”)’s motion to dismiss. Wilder involved two cases in the Middle District of Florida that were consolidated and transferred to the Western District of Missouri. The Plaintiffs are a group of current and former employees who alleged that FM&T violated Title VII because the company failed to accommodate Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs when implementing their COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate and exemption process.

FM&T moved to dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint on several grounds, including that the complaint failed to allege facts that would support a finding of an adverse employment action. Plaintiffs were fired for not complying with the procedures for unvaccinated employees, not for religious reasons. The Court, however, applied the new, lower standard for adverse employment that the Eighth Circuit introduced under Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, which held that a plaintiff “is only required to plead some harm respecting an identifiable term or condition of employment.” The Court determined that the Plaintiffs had plausibly pled that FMT’s mandatory weekly testing for unvaccinated employees was an adverse employment action.

However, the Court did grant FM&T’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ allegation of retaliation under Title VII. FM&T had told employees in September 2021 that that they would need to test weekly. The Plaintiffs did not request religious exemptions or express their objections until a month after FM&T imposed the testing requirement. The Court, therefore, concluded that the “adverse actions relating to the [testing requirement] could not have reasonably been caused by Plaintiffs’ protected activity.”

Lastly, the Court denied FM&T’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ request seeking class status under their complaint. The Court held FM&T has not demonstrated that the class allegations are “so deficient as to warrant striking them at this early stage.”