Case updates this week:

July 29, 2024: The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a pair of decisions in cases involving Title VII religious discrimination claims against Aspirus, a non-profit hospital system in Wisconsin, by some of its former employees. Both cases had been dismissed by the District Court for Western District of Wisconsin for failure to state a plausible claim for relief under Title VII. The Seventh Circuit reversed the District Court’s decisions holding that the District Court’s interpretation of what constitutes a religious observance or belief was in error.

The Plaintiffs in both Passarella and Dottenwhy v. Aspirus, Inc., and Bube and Hedrington v. Aspirus Hospital, Inc., were employees of Aspirus who had sought religious exemptions from receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. The issue in both cases was whether their requests were religious in nature or primarily medical or personal objections, even if inspired by religious belief. Each of the Plaintiffs in both cases described their religious beliefs in terms of their need to care for their bodies as temples of G-d, and that their safety concerns with the COVID-19 vaccine violated that religious belief.

The Seventh Circuit treated the question of what constitutes a religious observance, practice, or belief under Title VII as though it was interpreting a new statute instead of one that was over 50 years old. Courts in the past had required Plaintiffs to explain how their religious beliefs prevented them from complying with the employer’s policies. If the reasons offered were primarily something other than religion, for example, medical or safety objections, Plaintiffs could not simply wrap religious reasons around those objections to qualify for religious accommodation. This approach to interpreting whether an objection was religious or not was sufficiently settled so that District Courts could decide the issue as a matter of law and dismiss a complaint that alleged an objection that was primarily non-religious.

That is exactly what the District Court did in these cases. Each of the Plaintiffs alleged a sincerely held religious belief but did not connect that belief to the reason for refusing to accept the COVID-19 vaccine. The reasons they offered had to do with safety, not religion. Therefore, the Plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged facts that would sustain a claim of religious discrimination under Title VII.

The Seventh Circuit reversed because it found wiggle room from the language of Title VII that would allow someone to “plausibly claim” religious discrimination even where the allegations were a mix of religious and non-religious objections. The Court warned the parties to “be careful not to overread today’s decision” because the defendant could still show, after discovery and possibly a trial, that there was no religious discrimination. But the effect of the Court’s decision was to do away with a well-understood statutory interpretation to open it up for re-interpretation. In addition to subjecting the defendant, Aspirus, to the expense of discovery and trial, as the dissent in Passarella noted, the Seventh Circuit’s decision also opens the door to new challengers seeking to expand the kinds of claims that fit within the definition of a religious, rather than a secular objection. The example the dissent provided in Passarella illustrated how boundless the Court’s new definition could be.

The dissent offered the hypothetical of a man who believes G-d wants him to be a good father. He decides that Thursday nights are family nights because that is what fits his family’s schedule. He then objects to working on Thursdays for religious reasons. The rationale is secular even if there is a religious reason behind the choice. A trial court could have dismissed such an objection as secular and not religious as a matter of law. After Bube and Passarella it would be an open question.