Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—9th Cir.: Christian Jewish employee who refused COVID vax adequately pleaded a religious-accommodation claim, (Jul 27, 2026)

By Nicholas Kaster, J.D.

The notice requirement measures only the sufficiency of the employer’s information about the employee’s religious beliefs or practices, not the validity of those beliefs and practices.

An employee who is a Christian Jew, terminated by her employer for refusing a COVID vaccine, adequately pleaded a claim for a denial of a religious accommodation, the Ninth Circuit has ruled, reversing the decision of a federal district court. The court held that the employee satisfied the second element of a prima facie claim for failure to accommodate, for purposes of the pleading stage, because she plausibly alleged that she informed the employer of her religious belief and its conflict with the employer’s vaccine mandate (Weiss v. The Permanente Medical Group, Inc., No. 24-6609 (9th Cir. July 24, 2026)).

Mandatory vaccine policy. The employee worked as a Managerial Senior Consultant, which was a fully remote position in her employer’s health-engagement consulting department. In August 2021, her employer initiated a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy. The mandate required all employees to either provide proof of full vaccination status or acquire a valid exemption by September 30, 2021. If an employee failed to comply with the mandate by the September 30 deadline, the employee would be put on unpaid leave for 60 days. If the employee failed to comply with the mandate within this 60-day window, the employee would be terminated.

Sought a religious exemption. Shortly after the employer imposed its mandate, the employee requested a religious exemption. She explained that her religious beliefs as a Christian Jew did not allow her to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. She listed passages from Deuteronomy and 1 Corinthians and explained that the COVID-19 vaccines went directly against her beliefs. On August 30, the employer approved the employee’s request for a religious exemption from its vaccine requirement.

Approved, then further review. However, three weeks later, the employer notified her that, due to its findings and concerns about a pattern of insincere religious exemption requests among its employees, it would be conducting additional review of all previously approved exemptions. The following month, the employer told the employee that more information was needed to further evaluate whether she had a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance that prevented her from receiving any COVID-19 vaccine.

Questions. Thereafter, the employer sent her several supplemental questions, including: “What else besides the COVID-19 vaccine do you refuse to put in your body as a result of your religious belief? Have you put this belief into practice in any other areas of your life? Do you currently take or have you ever taken medications of any kind (over the counter or prescription) as an adult? If you answered yes: ‘When is the last time you took such medicine? Is the COVID 19 vaccine different from these medicines? If so, how?’ Why does your religious belief prevent you from receiving the COVID-19 vaccination but not from taking other medications?”

Fired. When she did not fully respond to the supplemental inquiry, the employer revoked the employee’s exemption and terminated her because she failed to get vaccinated. She sued, alleging violations of Title VII, California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), and the California Constitution. The employer moved to dismiss her federal and state statutory claims, arguing that she had not alleged that she adequately notified the employer of the conflict between her beliefs and its vaccine mandate. A federal district court in California granted the employer’s motion as to each claim. The current appeal ensued.

Failure to accommodate claim. Title VII prohibits employers from firing employees because of the employees’ religion. FEHA likewise forbids employers from discriminating against employees based on their religion. Both statutes require employers to accommodate employees’ religious beliefs unless doing so would impose an undue hardship.

To state a prima facie case of failure to accommodate, the employee must show that (1) she had a bona fide religious belief, the practice of which conflicted with an employment duty; (2) she informed her employer of the belief and conflict; and (3) the employer threatened her with or subjected her to discriminatory treatment, including discharge, because of her inability to fulfill the job requirements. In this case, the employer argued that the employee had not sufficiently alleged the second element of the prima facie case—that she gave the employer sufficient notice of the conflict between her religious beliefs and the mandate. And it was on that basis that the district court resolved the case. Thus, on appeal, the Ninth Circuit limited its inquiry to the “notice requirement.”

Notice requirement. The Ninth Circuit explained that a “sensible approach” to notice in this context is to require the employee to provide only enough information about her religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict. Any greater notice requirement would permit an employer to delve into the religious practices of an employee in order to determine whether religion mandates the employee’s adherence. To be sure, said the court, “conclusory assertions” of conflict with religious beliefs are insufficient to satisfy the notice requirement, and an employee must provide enough information to put the employer on notice of an “actual conflict.”

Information in initial request. Applying these well-established principles to the present case, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the employee satisfied Title VII’s notice requirement. The employee plausibly alleged that she provided notice of her religious conflict with the mandate in her initial request for a religious exemption. She identified herself to management as “a Christian Jew” and described specific religious doctrines that she asserted prohibited her from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. These doctrines included the Torah’s prohibition against “accepting foreign material into our bodies,” Deuteronomy’s counsel against “needle wounds except for direct curative benefit,” and the professed requirement under Jewish law to “maintain [one’s] body and blood uncontaminated.” She also stated that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine would be contrary to her belief that she should not “introduce foreign substances into [her] body temple that change how [her] Creator designed it.”

Difference not explained? The employer argued that the employee’s initial exemption request failed to demonstrate a conflict between her religious beliefs and the mandate because she had received other vaccines and did not explain why COVID-19 vaccines are different from the prior vaccines that she received. According to the employer, because her initial request “established a basis to seek additional information,” it did not inform the employer of a sincerely held religious belief conflicting with the policy, and the employee failed to cure this deficiency in her incomplete responses to the employer’s supplementary questions. The Ninth Circuit disagreed. The employee acknowledged that she had previously received vaccinations, and she explained that her present concern arose not because the COVID-19 vaccine was different, but because her religious commitment had changed.

Employer understood. Additionally, the employer’s initial approval of her request for a religious exemption demonstrated that the employer understood she was asserting a religious conflict with the company’s mandate. The approval notice acknowledged that the employee was requesting a religion-based exemption and stated that an exemption had been approved based on the information the employee provided on the employer’s religious exemption request form. The approval notice further stated that, if the employee’s views changed, and she no longer had a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance that prevented her from receiving any COVID-19 vaccine, she had to comply with the mandate.

There was no suggestion that the employer ever questioned that she was asserting a religious objection to the mandate. Thus, said the appellate court, the employee plausibly alleged that she provided sufficient information for the employer to “understand the existence of a conflict” between her beliefs and its mandate.

Sincerity, not notice. The record indicated that the employer doubted the sincerity of the employee’s claimed religious conflict. The employer’s request for supplemental information explained that, in reviewing employees’ religious-exemption requests, “it has come to our attention that many employees have submitted similar or nearly identical exemption requests containing language that was taken verbatim from various free and paid template forms available on the internet.” Based on this and other findings, the employer further scrutinized the employee’s request and asked for additional information about her religious beliefs and practices.

The nature of the employer’s supplemental questions—inquiries about whether she refused to take other substances based on her religious beliefs, why her religious beliefs prevented her from taking the COVID-19 vaccine, and whether she put her beliefs about the sanctity of her body into practice in other areas of her life—probed the sincerity of her professed beliefs about how she was to treat her body, not whether her professed beliefs were religious in nature.

Separate inquiries. The sincerity of the employee’s professed beliefs and whether the employee adequately notified her employer that she had a religious conflict with an employment requirement were separate inquiries, the Ninth Circuit noted. The district court blurred the distinction when it concluded that the employer’s initial exemption request “consisted of only general objections to the COVID-19 vaccine,” which justified the employer’s supplemental inquiry to help it ascertain whether the exemption request “constituted a religious belief or an isolated teaching.” The district court reasoned that treating the information in the initial request as sufficient to provide notice of a religious conflict would have resulted in a “limitless excuse for avoiding all unwanted obligations” because it provided little basis for the employer to evaluate the extent of her religious beliefs’ potential conflict. From this, the district court held that the employee failed to aver plausibly that she adequately informed the employer of the conflict between her religious beliefs and the policy.

The notice requirement measures only the sufficiency of the employer’s information about the employee’s religious beliefs or practices, not the validity of those beliefs and practices, the Ninth Circuit concluded. Nor does the notice requirement invite employers or courts to consider whether an employee’s “religion mandates the employee’s adherence” to the beliefs or practices asserted. Because the employee plausibly alleged that she informed the employer of her “belief and conflict” with the mandate, she established the second element of the prima facie case for purposes of the pleading stage, the Ninth Circuit held. The district court’s holding was therefore reversed and the case was remanded.

The case is No. 24-6609.

Judge: Forrest, D.

Attorneys: James Andrew Sonne, Stanford Law School for Mimi Weiss. Sean T. Strauss (Seyfarth Shaw) for Permanente Medical Group, Inc.

Companies: Permanente Medical Group, Inc.

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