Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, EVIDENCE, DISCOVERY—W.D. Wash.: Police department defeats fired officer’s motion to exclude infectious disease doctor’s COVID-related testimony, (Sep 16, 2025)

By Tulay Turan, J.D.

The officer did not explain how the cost of her unvaccinated status could be evaluated without information about health-and-safety related risks.

In a former police officer’s religious discrimination suit based on a police department’s failure to accommodate her exemption request to the COVID-19 vaccine, a federal district court in Washington denied her motion to exclude a doctor’s opinions under Federal Rules of Evidence 702 and 403. The court found the infectious disease doctor was a qualified expert who offered relevant, reliable opinions that will assist in the resolution of the department’s undue hardship defense. In addition, the doctor’s opinions related to COVID-19 vaccine development and approval were relevant and not prejudicial (Rosa v. City of Issaquah, No. 2:24-cv-01673-TL (W.D. Wash. Sept. 15, 2025)).

The Issaquah Police Department terminated the police officer after it determined it could not accommodate her religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine requirement implemented during the pandemic. The employee filed a religious discrimination suit against the department, and the department produced an expert report of a board-certified physician in infectious disease. His testimony included background information on the pandemic and the development of the first vaccine as well as other opinions on vaccination and mitigation techniques.

Motion to exclude. The department moved for summary judgment on the employee’s claim, and the employee filed this motion to exclude the doctor’s testimony. The employee’s Federal Rules of Evidence 702 challenge argued the doctor was not qualified to opine as an expert, his opinions were irrelevant and unreliable, and his testimony and report would confuse the issues and should be excluded. The department opposed the motion.

Qualifications. Denying the employee’s request to exclude the doctor’s opinions under FRE 702, the court first found the doctor was abundantly qualified by both experience and training to render the opinions he offered. He is a board-certified physician in infectious disease, currently works as an Associate Medical Director of Harborview Medical Center and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington.

From February 2020 until December 2023, the doctor was the Medical-Technical Team Lead for UW Medicine’s COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center. In that role, he oversaw all UW Medicine’s Personal Protective Equipment and testing policies and was involved in the vaccination rollout for employees. His CV included 82 peer-reviewed publications, 15 of which were about COVID-19 and appear to have contributed to the developing scientific understanding of viral transmission and best practices for prevention and response.

The doctor was a leader and decisionmaker on the front lines of the public health response to COVID-19 from the very first case identified in the United States throughout the entirety of UW’s emergency response. Thus, the court found his expertise qualified him to render the opinions he offered in this case.

Relevance of opinions. Next, the court found the doctor’s opinions were relevant. The court noted the department offered the testimony in support of its undue hardship defense to the employee’s claim. One critical dispute of fact related to hardship claims is the amount of health-and-safety related risk (and thus the amount of burden) a defendant would have taken on in accommodating an unvaccinated employee. Facts at issue in resolving this question here included the employee’s risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19 with her accommodations in place, as well as the comparable risk of her contracting or spreading COVID-19 if she did not require accommodation. Facts about how the virus that causes COVID-19 is spread, and the danger posed by the virus to different groups of people, are relevant in evaluating the potential consequences to the department of the employee contracting or transmitting COVID-19 in her role a police officer, the court found.

The court rejected the employee’s argument that information about vaccines and safety risks was irrelevant. She did not explain how the health-and-safety-related cost that her unvaccinated status imposed on the department could be evaluated without this information.

Reliability. The court also found the doctor’s opinions were reliable. His opinion was based on knowledge gained in “decades of working in clinical infectious diseases, infectious disease research, public health and epidemiology,” the medical studies and public health data he cited in his declaration and report, his review of over a dozen documents from this case, and a visit to the Issaquah Police Department. The court found this was clearly consistent with the types of sources typically relied on by medical professionals. Accordingly, the court found his opinions had “a reliable basis in the knowledge and experience of the relevant discipline.”

Application of principles and methods. Turning to the second prong of reliability, which requires that the expert testimony “reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts of the case,” the court found the doctor did consider the facts of this case with specificity. He considered the employee’s work duties, the settings in which she worked, and the people with whom she interacted in her role as a police officer. Her duties and environment impacted how likely she was to transmit COVID-19, and to whom—considerations relevant to the cost of accommodating her—and the doctor’s application of scientific information to these case-specific facts was sound methodology that will help the finder of fact.

The court found the doctor was a qualified expert who has offered relevant, reliable opinions that will assist in the resolution of the department’s undue hardship defense. Accordingly, the court denied the employee’s request to exclude the doctor’s opinions under FRE 702.

Vaccine development. Likewise, the court denied the employee’s request to exclude the doctor’s opinions as prejudicial or misleading under FRE 403. Regarding the doctor’s testimony on vaccine development and approval, the court found the data was relevant background information, and the employee failed to explain how the data implied anything about her personal opinions or how such an implication could be prejudicial when the very basis of the case arose out of her religious objection to a workplace vaccination requirement.

Vaccine misinformation. The employee also objected to a section of the doctor’s report entitled “Vaccine Hesitancy and Misinformation” on the grounds that it was likely to be more prejudicial than beneficial. Other than that assertion, however, she offered no argument on this topic. That alone was a sufficient basis to reject her unreasoned request for exclusion, the court said.

Moreover, most of the opinions he offered in the challenged section were directly responsive either to specific statements in the employee’s complaint or to arguments she advanced during this litigation. She failed to show that allowing these opinions would be unfair, and it was more likely, according to the court, that the department would be unfairly prejudiced by their exclusion, which would hamper its ability to make its case in light of her arguments.

Purported opinion about accommodation. Finally, the court addressed the employee’s argument that the doctor’s purported opinion that the department should not have accommodated her even temporarily would likely confuse the jury and not assist it. The court said it did not need to consider the likelihood of confusion because the employee presented no evidence that the doctor had ever expressed that opinion. In fact, the deposition testimony showed the doctor took care not to opine on the department’s temporary accommodation decisions. Nowhere in the referenced material did he opine that the department should not have accommodated her.

Thus, the court denied the employee’s request to exclude the doctor’s opinions as prejudicial or misleading under FRE 403.

The case is No. 2:24-cv-01673-TL.

Judge: Lin, T.

Attorneys: Tracy Tribbett (Pacific Justice Institute) for Cheyanne Rosa fka Cheyanne Dixson. Shannon E. Phillips (Summit Law Group) for City of Issaquah.

Companies: City of Issaquah, Washington

Cases: EvidenceDiscovery Discrimination ReligiousDiscrimination Covid19 WashingtonNews