Lawsuits challenging employers’ authority to require measures intended to prevent COVID-19 infections continue to wend their way through the federal judiciary. Last month, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a claim from a nurse who was granted a COVID-19 vaccine but objected to her employer’s requirement that she regularly test for infection.
In Jackson v. Methodist Health Services Corp., the plaintiff justified her vaccination exemption request based on the use of fetal stem cell lines in the development of the vaccine. Her employer agreed to grant the exemption but conditioned the accommodation on the grounds that she regularly test for COVID-19 infection. She again objected, claiming that asymptomatic testing violated her moral conscience. Her employer rejected her alternative proposal that she only be tested if she exhibited COVID-19 symptoms.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiff failed to state a claim of religious discrimination under Title VII. The court noted that she failed to explain why the testing mandate conflicted with her religious beliefs and convictions. A general reference to moral objections did not satisfy her burden of demonstrating an actual religious belief that required an exemption from asymptomatic testing.
The court did not need to reach the issue of whether waiting on testing until the plaintiff developed COVID-19 symptoms would have presented an undue hardship to the employer, or a direct threat to patients or coworkers. When considering religious accommodation requests under Title VII, employers do not have to agree to the accommodation requested by the employee and may decide to provide an alternative measure that does not violate the employee’s professed religious beliefs.
Source: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/mandatory-covid-testing-did-not-violate-3414348/
