Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—RELIGIOUS—S.D. Cal.: Hospital employee, fired after refusing COVID vaccination, advances Title VII claims, (Apr 24, 2025)

By Thomas K. Lauletta, J.D.

The employee alleged that her body was a temple of the Holy Spirit and that it was against her religious creed to defile it with a vaccine that alters her God given immune system.

Declining to dismiss the Title VII failure-to-accommodate and state law religious discrimination claims of a hospital office assistant who was fired for refusing to comply with her employer’s policy requiring that all employees accept COVID-19 vaccinations, a federal court in California found that she held a sincere religious belief opposing inoculations and that she clearly informed her employer of her belief that conflicted with its policy. The court also allowed the employee’s derivative claim for wrongful termination in violation of public policy to move forward (Ashcroft v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group, No. 24-cv-0035-MMA-MMP (S.D. Cal. Apr. 21, 2025)).

The Southern California Permanente Medical Group is a private health care organization that employed the plaintiff as an office assistant. In early August 2021, following the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak, the employer issued a requirement that all employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations or otherwise obtain a medical or religious exemption.

Exemption request. The employee sought an exemption as a “follower of the Christian faith” who believes “that her body belongs to God and is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” that “it is against her religious beliefs to ingest or inject her body with possible harmful substances,” and that “due to her pro-life beliefs, her faith strongly opposes injecting her body with the COVID-19 vaccine” because the manufacturers of the vaccine use aborted fetal tissue in producing the vaccine.

Termination. After asking the employee several detailed questions about her refusal to take the COVID vaccination, the employer denied her requested religious exemption and notified her that she was in violation of its policy. She was fired in January 2022 when she refused to get the vaccination.

Failure to accommodate. The employee subsequently sued, alleging that the employer violated Title VII and the FEHA when it failed to accommodate her religious beliefs. Moving to dismiss, the employer argued that she did not sufficiently allege she informed it of her bona fide religious belief that conflicted with its vaccination requirement. In its prior dismissals of the employee’s complaints, the court found that her allegations were insufficient to establish a bona fide religious belief. She again argued that the court erred in finding that “her allegations pertaining to her body as a temple of the Holy Spirit which she cannot defile are insufficient to communicate the religious nature of her beliefs.”

Looking to legal precedent, the court stated whether an employee’s belief is bona fide depends on whether it is sincerely held and religious in the employee’s scheme of things. Here, the court found the employee’s expanded explanation of her beliefs was persuasive. It cited with approval the First Circuit’s holding in Thornton v. Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals that a similarly worded statement of religious beliefs was not “isolated moral teachings” but rather a part of a “comprehensive system of beliefs about fundamental or ultimate matters.”

The court concluded that the employee made references to overarching religious beliefs and sufficient connection to her anti-vaccine position, including the statement to her employer that her “sincerely-held Christian beliefs DO NOT ALLOW ME to have a biological substance injected into my body. My blood is sacred and life is found in the blood. My own salvation was bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ and I CANNOT taint my blood with vaccines.”

This statement, said the court, satisfied the second element for proving her failure-to-accommodate claim, requiring that she informed the employer of her belief and conflict with the employer’s policy. The third element of the claim was satisfied by the employee’s termination for failure to comply with the employer’s vaccination requirement.

Wrongful termination in violation of public policy. Because the employee’s Title VII and FEHA claims were successful, the court also allowed the wrongful termination in violation of public policy claim to proceed as a derivative.

The case is No. 24-cv-0035-MMA-MMP.

Judge: Anello, M.

Attorneys: Michael John Peffer (Pacific Justice Institute) for Sharry Ashcroft. Sean T. Strauss (Seyfarth Shaw) for Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

Companies: Southern California Permanente Medical Group

Cases: ReligiousDiscrimination Discrimination Discharge Covid19 CaliforniaNews