Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—E.D.N.Y.: Hospital employees’ COVID-19 religious exemptions would have caused employer undue hardship, (May 27, 2025)

By Justin Marcus Smith, J.D.

The employees also did not allege that they requested accommodation for remote work and such an accommodation likewise would have caused undue hardship on the hospital.

Two former hospital employees could not proceed with Title VII and state law claims against their former hospital employer due to substantive pleading deficiencies in their second amended complaint, held the federal district court in Brooklyn, New York. The court determined that the employer showed that granting the employees a religious exemption to COVID-19 vaccination would have caused “undue hardship” because it would have placed the employer in violation of New York state law. The state vaccination mandate did not permit religious exemptions. The court cited how Second Circuit courts have routinely dismissed Title VII claims against employers where granting religious exemptions to the state COVID-19 vaccination mandate would have caused undue hardship by placing the employers in violation of the mandate. The employees in this case also appeared to have a poor factual basis pertinent to remote work accommodation. The court noted employers are not required to create positions to accommodate employee religious beliefs, and a religious accommodation under Title VII cannot involve the elimination of an essential job function. The court dismissed the employees’ Title VII claims with prejudice and dismissed their state law claims without prejudice (Haczynska v. Mount Sinai Health System, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-03091-MKB-PK (E.D.N.Y. May 13, 2025)).

Background. A lab quality analyst and an administrative assistant who were former employees of Mount Sinai Health System, Inc. (MSHS) initially sued New York Governor Kathleen Hochul, New York Department of Health Commissioner James McDonald, MSHS, and related MSHS entities and individuals (collectively, MSHS), in connection with mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.

After the court granted an initial motion to dismiss, the employees’ second amended complaint (SAC) renewed their claims against the MSHS parties, only, for religious discrimination for failure to accommodate in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.; the New York State Human Rights Law, N.Y. Exec. Law § 290 et seq. (NYSHRL); and the New York City Human Rights Law, N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-101 et seq. (NYCHRL); and included new claims for sex, age, national origin, and disability discrimination under the NYSHRL and NYCHRL; and, a new claim for common law fraud. The NYSHRL claim asserted actual or perceived age, creed, sex, disability, and national origin discrimination. MSHS moved to dismiss the SAC for failure to state a claim under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

Title VII. The court held the employees made a prima facie claim of religious discrimination, but their requested accommodation would have created an undue hardship for MSHS. The employees worked on-site, interacted with coworkers, and the quality analyst had laboratory job duties that had to be performed in-person. MSHS argued the analyst did not allege that remote work would have been feasible, and it argued the administrative assistant only made conclusory allegations about remote work. The employees both argued that remote work would have saved MSHS money.

To begin its analysis, the court noted how the Supreme Court recently rejected the “more than de minimis” standard for an employer’s undue hardship showing. See Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447, 468 (2023). In Groff, the Supreme Court explained that undue hardship applies when a burden on an employer is substantial in the overall context of its business. Employers can raise the undue hardship defense in a pre-answer motion to dismiss, where, as here, the defense appears on the face of the complaint.

The court determined that MSHS showed that granting the employees a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate would have caused “undue hardship.” MSHS denied the employees’ requests for religious exemptions when New York state law required healthcare facilities to “continuously require personnel to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.” The mandate only permitted medical exemptions; it did not allow for religious exemptions. The court noted that district courts in the Second Circuit have routinely dismissed Title VII claims against employers with COVID-19 vaccination mandates on the basis that granting employee requests for religious exemptions would have created an undue hardship by forcing employers to violate state law. As was the case with the defendants in the long line of COVID-19 cases, the court said MSHS would have suffered an “undue hardship” if forced to grant religious exemptions to the employees because that would have violated state law.

Turning to whether MSHS could have accommodated, rather than exempted the employees, the court noted how the Second Circuit has cautioned that Title VII does not obligate an employer to grant an accommodation if it would cause an undue hardship in the conduct of the employer’s business. The employees alleged their jobs did not require them to be patient facing or involve direct patient care, such that MSHS could have granted a “blanket” exemption, but the court said it was “well-established that a blanket exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine requirement would not have removed plaintiff from Section 2.61’s definition of ‘personnel’ and would have forced [MSHS] to suffer an ‘undue hardship’ by violating Section 2.61.”

Moreover, the court noted the employees did not allege that they actually requested remote work. They only alleged that MSHS did not consider and did not offer them any accommodation that would have allowed them to continue employment. The court noted that Second Circuit courts that have allowed Title VII failure-to-accommodate claims about remote work requests have consistently noted that the employees involved alleged that they actually requested accommodation. The court cited to numerous examples of this.

The instant employees’ roles were also admittedly in-person and required interaction with other covered personnel. The analyst had a laboratory job. The court reasoned that if MSHS had altered her schedule to lessen interaction with co-workers, that would not have eliminated the possibility of exposing other covered personnel, patients, or residents to COVID-19. The court also found that undue hardship applied, because, even if MSHS had permitted the employees to work fully remotely, MSHS would have had to find other employees to perform their in-person duties. The court noted here that employers are not required to create positions to accommodate employee religious beliefs, and a religious accommodation under Title VII cannot involve the elimination of an essential job function. For all of the above reasons, the court granted the MSHS motion to dismiss the employees’ Title VII claims.

State claims. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the employees’ state law claims given the dismissal of the Title VII claims.

No amendment. The employees did not ask for leave to amend the SAC in the event of dismissal. The court had already permitted amendment to plead additional facts to support an allegation that MSHS could have accommodated the employees’ religious beliefs, but the court found they failed to do that for Title VII and also improperly attempted to amend beyond the amendment leave previously granted. The court found the pleading deficiencies were substantive, amendment would be futile, and the court therefore declined to permit a third amended complaint. However, the court only dismissed the Title VII claims for religious discrimination with prejudice. The dismissal of the state law claims was without prejudice.

The case is No. 1:23-cv-03091-MKB-PK.

Judge: Brodie, M.

Attorneys: Ronald A. Berutti (Murray-Nolan Berutti LLC) for Halina Haczynska and Margaret Wielkopolan. Rory J. McEvoy (Akerman LLP) for Mount Sinai Health System, Inc., The Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn Institute of Medical Research at Mount Sinai LLC.

Companies: Mount Sinai Health System, Inc.; The Mount Sinai Hospital; Icahn Institute of Medical Research at Mount Sinai LLC

Cases: ReligiousDiscrimination Discrimination Covid19 Procedure NewYorkNews