Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—W.D. Pa.: Unvaccinated sales specialist’s ADA claim, based on perceived weakened immune system, advances, (Dec 16, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

“It bears repeating that there is nothing in the express statutory text of the ADA that nullifies the existence of an impairment caused by one’s personal choices.”

A federal court in Pennsylvania declined to dismiss the ADA regard-as claim of an AstraZeneca hospital sales specialist who refused to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate and who alleged the company regarded her as having a physiological condition limiting her immune system due to her unvaccinated status. The ADA, explained the court, “instructs that an employer’s companywide COVID vaccine mandate does not magically inoculate that employer from a cognizable disability discrimination claim based upon its perception that a noncompliant employee’s immune system was weakened, diminished, or otherwise affected or influenced by her unvaccinated status” (Siko v. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, No. 23-1184 (W.D. Pa. Dec. 10, 2025)).

In August 2021, the global biopharmaceutical company told its employees they had to disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status and told unvaccinated employees they had to wear masks and undergo weekly testing. While attending an all-day work meeting that same month, the employee, who was unvaccinated, was the only employee to wear a mask. Later that night, another employee who had attended the meeting tested positive for COVID-19. Only the employee was required to quarantine for seven to 10 days.

Terminated. In January 2022, AstraZeneca imposed a COVID-19 vaccination mandate on its U.S. workforce. Although the employee applied for a religious exemption, her request was denied. Citing her natural immunity to COVID-19, which she claimed came from a previous COVID-19 infection, the employee asked the company to reconsider. Instead, it fired her.

She then sued under the ADA alleging that the employees who complied with the vaccine mandate were physically changed by the vaccine and because of this physical difference, AstraZeneca regarded her and other unvaccinated employees “as if they were perpetually infected by COVID-19, even when asymptomatic, and/or perpetually substantially more susceptible of becoming infected by COVID-19 and then infecting others....” The company, she further alleged, perceived her purported immunocompromised and infectious condition to be serious, current, indefinite, and substantially limiting of all her major life activities that involve personal interaction with others because it viewed her and her unvaccinated coworkers as posing an unacceptable risk to others.

R&R. After a magistrate issued a Report and Recommendation recommending dismissal of the employee’s claims, she objected to the R&R.

Impairment. The court first noted that for an individual to establish they are regarded as disabled, the ADA requires only that the employer perceive there to be a physical or mental impairment, regardless of whether such impairment actually limits or is perceived to limit a major life activity. While the ADA does not expressly define “impairment,” the Supreme Court instructs that a statute be interpreted “in accord with the ordinary public meaning of its terms at the time of its enactment.” Noting that the statutory term “impairment” is understood by its plain and ordinary public meaning as illuminated by dictionary definitions as well as by the context of its usage within the ADA, the court explained that, as relevant here, an individual “being regarded as having such an impairment” includes an individual with an actual or perceived physical state of being or health condition “affecting” or “influencing” his or her immune system.

Personal choice. For its part, AstraZeneca argued that the employee’s personal choice not to receive the COVID vaccine somehow negated or otherwise undermined the sufficiency of her factual averments that it perceived her as having an impaired immune system. In support, it relied on Beard v. Phila. Corp. for Aging, a 2023 decision from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and two such decisions from the District of Maryland, Friend v. AstraZeneca Pharm. LP, and Foshee v. AstraZeneca Pharm. LP. But Beard, said the court, defined “regarded as” disability discrimination claims by case law and an EEOC regulation predating the ADAAA and the other two cases also cited the same “mistaken ‘substantially limited’ standard.”

Further, the court observed, all three incorrectly held that an “employee’s refusal to get a vaccine required by an employer is not itself an ‘impairment,’ and rather ‘reflect[s] a personal choice... that... cannot be considered an impairment under the ADA,’ because refusing to get a vaccine required by an employer is not a disability of any sort.” Noting again that “there is nothing in the express statutory text of the ADA that nullifies the existence of an impairment caused by one’s personal choices,” the court stressed that these three decisions “extend beyond judicial authority.”

Universally applicable requirement. The court next rejected AstraZeneca’s contention that implementing a universally applicable vaccination requirement for all its employees further “inoculate[d] it from scrutiny under the ADA.” Rather, the court observed, “the fact that AstraZeneca imposed a company-wide qualification standard in the form of a vaccine mandate because it believed unvaccinated employees universally had a weakened or an otherwise affected or influenced immune system actually strengthens the inference that it regarded [the employee] (and all other unvaccinated employees) as having an impairment,” pursuant to the ADA. Indeed, the court continued, if the company did not “hold the view that unvaccinated employees were immunocompromised then it would have no reason to impose such a far-reaching qualification standard to purge unvaccinated employees from its ranks to ameliorate its concern that unvaccinated employees posed risks it did not desire for its workforce.” Thus the court found no statutory basis to negate the employee’s factual averments that AstraZeneca perceived her immune system to be affected or influenced by not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine notwithstanding her own putative natural immunity.

Sufficiency of allegations. Turning to the sufficiency of her allegations, the court noted that she averred that AstraZeneca perceived her to be immunocompromised and infectious because she did not receive a COVID-19 vaccine despite her natural immunity, and therefore it imposed more onerous requirements upon her, and then fired her and did not subject her vaccinated coworkers to those more onerous conditions nor terminate their employment. She also alleged she had to wear a mask while attending an all-day work meeting because the company perceived her as being immunocompromised and infectious, while all other employees who attended that meeting were not required to wear masks because they were vaccinated and thus not perceived to be immunocompromised and infectious.

The company then allegedly singled her out by requiring her to quarantine because another employee who attended that meeting tested positive for COVID-19 that same night, while all other employees in attendance were not required to quarantine, again because AstraZeneca perceived her, and only her, to be immunocompromised. She also alleged that AstraZeneca perceived her as being immunocompromised despite her natural immunity because she did not become “physically changed” by the vaccine that the other employees received.

Transitory and minor. Further, she alleged that it regarded her as if she were “perpetually infected by COVID-19, even when asymptomatic, and/or perpetually substantially more susceptible of becoming infected by COVID-19 and then infecting others than those who had COVID-19 vaccination.” She also averred that the “symptoms, hospitalization, and mortality rates for COVID-19 are much more severe and higher when compared to other illnesses such as swine flu and seasonal flu,” and that the company considered her perceived weakened immune system serious enough to justify terminating her employment.

Based on these allegations, the court found her averments characterized AstraZeneca’s perception of her purportedly weakened immune system to be “something serious enough to quarantine her and ultimately remove her from the workforce completely, which is far more serious than common ailments like a cold or flu, and hardly mild or limited.” Accordingly, denying the company’s partial motion to dismiss, the court found these averments plausibly satisfied the statutory requirement that her perceived impairment not be “minor.”

The case is No. 23-1184.

Judge: Hardy, W.S.

Attorneys: Gregory H. Teufel (OGC Law) for Tammy Siko. Carolyn Corcoran (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius) for Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals LP.

Companies: AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP

Cases: DisabilityDiscrimination Discrimination Covid19 PennsylvaniaNews