Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—9th Cir.: Former youth services employees fail to assert claims concerning COVID-19 vaccine mandate, (Jul 22, 2026)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

Their complaint did not plausibly allege personal involvement by any of the officials named in the suit with regard to alleged constitutional violations.

Affirming a district court’s dismissal, for failure to state a claim, of a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action brought by former employees of the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), the Ninth Circuit found that the complaint did not plausibly allege personal involvement by any of the named officials in the alleged constitutional violations of the employees’ free exercise, equal protection, or procedural due process rights. The court further held that the Eleventh Amendment barred their claims for prospective injunctive relief because they identified no ongoing violation of federal law where the governor’s COVID vaccination proclamation was rescinded months before they had filed their original complaint. Finally, the court held the district court acted within its discretion in denying leave to amend (Seagraves v. Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families, No. 25-3282 (9th Cir. July 21, 2026)).

The plaintiffs in this case are former DCYF employees who were separated from the agency after their requests for religious accommodations from the COVID vaccine requirement were denied.

Mandate implementation. After Washington’s governor issued a proclamation requiring all state employees to be vaccinated against COVID by October 18, 2021, the DCYF began considering how to implement the mandate’s requirements. The agency’s secretary was asked in a private text message about how DCYF would handle requests for religious exemptions. He stated that the policy was being developed and the agency would be “as strict as we are allowed to be.”

A week later, the agency secretary sent an email to various DCYF staff, including the HR director and the assistant secretary of Partnership, Prevention, and Services, outlining a “multiprong approach to vaccination.” Its fundamental message was that employees must “[g]et vaccinated or lose your job,” which the agency secretary wanted “[c]ommunicated to unvaccinated people in ways that [are] helpful for them to hear.”

Potential objections that employees might raise to the vaccine requirement were identified, and included “[s]afety,” “[p]olitical tribalism,” and “[r]eligious objections, real or imagined.” The email went on to list various resources that might help with employees’ concerns about the vaccines, concluding that “[o]nce we get a strong message out about the inability to hide behind the exemption strategy we will want to start helping people over their other concerns.”

Exemption process. Ultimately, the process implemented by DCYF was bifurcated into two distinct stages: exemption and accommodation. Of the 279 exemption requests that were approved at the first stage, 216 of those employees sought accommodation at the second stage. Of those, 105 requests were approved and 111 were denied.

All 17 of the employees in this case had received a religious exemption, but at the second stage DCYF determined that reassignment was the only available reasonable accommodation. In response, the employees requested alternative accommodations such as remote work or frequent testing. DCYF rejected those suggestions and the employees were ultimately separated from the agency.

Lawsuit. Subsequently, the employees filed this lawsuit alleging violations of their constitutional rights, Section 1983, and various provisions of Washington state law. Initially, the DCYF and the agency secretary were named as defendants. The district court dismissed all claims without prejudice and with leave to amend.

Following this initial dismissal, the employees filed a first amendment complaint naming the HR director and the assistant secretary of Partnership, Prevention, and Services as additional defendants. It included four federal constitutional claims against the officials under Section 1983 for violations of: (i) free exercise; (ii) procedural due process (iii) equal protection, and (iv) the Contracts Clause. According to the complaint, the agency secretary “personally and integrally participated in” creating the exemption and accommodation policies that were intentionally designed to treat religiously exempt employees less favorably. The two other named officials allegedly implemented the discriminatory policies.

Granting the officials’ motion to dismiss the complaint, the district court concluded that all four federal claims failed on the merits and that the employees had once again failed to plausibly allege the officials’ personal involvement in the alleged constitutional violations. The court further held that the employees’ official-capacity claims for reinstatement had failed because they still had not plausibly alleged an ongoing constitutional violation, given the proclamation was no longer in effect at the time of their suit. This appeal followed.

Personal involvement. First addressing whether the employees had plausibly alleged personal involvement by any of the officials in constitutional violations of their free exercise, equal protection, or procedural due process rights, the court determined that they had failed to do so.

All of the employees’ requests for accommodations in their current roles were denied based on determinations that they could not perform the essential functions of their positions unvaccinated without endangering the health and safety of others in the workplace, including children and families. Thus, their supposed constitutional injuries flowed from this determination. However, they did not allege that any of the officials personally participated in evaluating their accommodation requests.

The only non-conclusory factual allegations about the officials’ conduct related to the internal communications penned by the agency secretary discussing how to implement the vaccine policy, observed the court. The employees failed to allege any involvement by the other two officials other than their passive receipt of these communications. Thus, the only remaining theory was that the agency secretary set into motion an accommodation policy he knew or reasonably should have known would cause a constitutional injury.

Religious animus? This theory, continued the court, attempted to infer religious animus by juxtaposing the agency secretary’s language in his first private text message and subsequent emails. However, the court noted that “simply taking the language he used in two communications sent two months apart out of context and comparing it does not make plausible that DCYF’s accommodation policy was discriminatory or motivated by religious animus.” Instead, these communications showed that the agency secretary was concerned about DCYF complying with the applicable law.

Any remaining factual allegations provided by the employees in their pleadings undermined the plausibility of the “religious animus” theory, said the court. The communications by the agency secretary did not single out religiously motivated objections for special treatment. Religious objections were mentioned along with several secular objections, and the aim of the plan was to convince employees that their concerns about vaccination were unfounded, regardless of the religious or secular character of those concerns. That religious objections were one of several objections to address did not, without more, indicate hostility toward religion.

Accommodations granted. In considering the statistics provided by the employees, the court noted that nearly half of the 216 employees whose religious accommodation requests were processed to a final decision were accommodated, while just over half of the 22 employees who requested medical accommodation were similarly accommodated. These statistics did not make it plausible that DCYF’s accommodation process was discriminatory toward those who objected to vaccination on religious grounds, said the court. Thus, the employees failed to allege sufficient facts to support their theory that the agency secretary established a policy he knew or reasonably should have known would result in a constitutional violation. Accordingly, the district court’s dismissal of the claims against the officials was affirmed.

Injunctive relief. This left the claims for prospective injunctive relief against the officials in their official capacities. The court concluded that the Eleventh Amendment barred these claims because the employees had identified no ongoing violation of federal law. The proclamation was rescinded in October 2023, months before the employee filed their original complaint on January 30, 2024. Because the proclamation was no longer in effect, there was no ongoing constitutional violation and no threat of future enforcement, said the court.

Court’s discretion. Finally, the appellate court concluded that the district court acted within its discretion in denying the employees leave to amend, based on its reasonable conclusion that amendment would have been futile. The employees filed the first amended complaint after the district court dismissed the complaint based on the same deficiencies identified here. Rather than adding new factual allegations to cure these defects, the first amended complaint largely repackaged the employees’ legal theories and added two additional defendants with an even more tenuous connection to the purported violations than the agency secretary. Thus, the district court acted within its discretion in holding that further amendment would not render the claims viable.

The case is No. 25-3282.

Judge: Clifton, R.

Attorneys: Nathan J. Arnold (Arnold Jacobowitz & Alvarado) for Stephanie Seagraves, Belinda Brons, Benjamin Lupo, Charlene Ramirez, James Wilson, and Kristin Rowland. Zachary J. Pekelis (Pacifica Law Group) for Washington State Department of Children Youth and Families, Ross Hunter, Vickie Ybarra, and Marcos Rodriguez.

Companies: Washington State Department of Children Youth and Families

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