Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PROCEDURE—E.D. Pa.: Unsupported opinions and lack of qualification doom expert reports, (Mar 27, 2025)

By Sherri M. Schroeder, J.D.

In a COVID-19 religious exemption case, the court excluded the reports and opinions because a cardiologist/internist was not qualified to opine on religious matters and the reports contained unsupported conclusions.

A district court in Pennsylvania has excluded the testimony and reports of two expert witnesses made to support a doctor who was discharged because her requested religious exemption to the health care facility’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy did not satisfy the facility’s criteria and the doctor refused the COVID-19 vaccine. The doctor filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act for disparate treatment and failure to accommodate based on her religious views. In support of her response to a motion for summary judgment made by Main Line Health, Inc., Main Line Healthcare, Inc., and Main Line Health Integrative and Functional Medicine Services (Main Line), the doctor relied heavily on the opinions of two experts. When Main Line motioned to exclude their reports and opinions under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence (a “Daubert Motion”), the court granted the motion because it found one of the doctors—a cardiologist and internist—to be unqualified to opine on religious matters and his report to be based on unreliable principles, methods, and information while the other expert’s report also failed to meet the standard for reliability (Slattery v. Main Line Health, No. 22-4994 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 24, 2025)).

Facts. The doctor in question was working for Main Line as a physician whose specialty was integrative and regenerative medicine; she was also a practicing Evangelical Christian. When Main Line instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy during the pandemic, the doctor requested a religious exemption but was denied. Her appeal was also denied, and she was discharged when she failed to receive the vaccine by the specified date. After filing suit, she retained two experts. Dr. M was retained to opine on the “reasonableness of [the doctor’s] belief system based upon her understanding of COVID-19;” Dr. M also created a rebuttal report to a defense expert, Dr. S., who was retained by Main Line to report on Main Line’s undue hardship defense. Another expert, Dr. B, was also tasked with rebutting Dr. S’s conclusions.

Daubert factors. In keeping with the factors laid out in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., 509 U.S. 579, 591 (1993) (qualifications, reliability, and fit), the court first analyzed whether the doctor’s experts were qualified, turning first to the purpose of Dr. M’s original report. Here, the court concluded that while there was “no doubt” that Dr. M would be qualified to testify as to a field of medicine, he had no qualifications to opine on religious matters, as he was not an expert on religion nor had any qualifications related to religion. “The fact that the religious question at issue in [the doctor’s] case involves her views on the mechanics of the COVID-19 vaccine does not transform the religious question into a scientific one,” stated the court. Furthermore, the doctor had “consistently admitted that this case is one about religion, not science.” Therefore, the court excluded Dr. M’s original testimony.

In discussing Dr. M’s rebuttal report, the court delved further into Dr. M’s qualifications, noting that he was a board-certified internist and cardiologist with a master’s degree in public health focusing on epidemiology. However, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, his practice was entirely internal medicine. Therefore, the court questioned and was not convinced of his qualifications to opine on COVID-19. “The Court is unwilling to certify an expert on a relatively novel virus when they have had no previous experience with epidemiology, immunology, or infectious disease,” stated the court. The court also noted the skepticism of numerous other courts about Dr. M when he served as an expert in similar cases.

The court also determined that Dr. M’s rebuttal report failed Daubert’s reliability factor. “Dr. M[...] cites scientific articles with numerous deficiencies and limitations despite those articles’ authors acknowledging these limitations, however and notably, Dr. M[...] fails to do the same in his report,” wrote the court. “Instead, he takes them as absolute facts, ignoring the limitations of the studies he cites.” The court also noted that Dr. M’s claims about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine explicitly contradicted statements made by the CDC and that he “blatantly” stated false facts in support of his conclusion. “In the face of such balanced, tested and fact-based contradictions to Dr. M[...]’s statements, the Court cannot reliably trust the information proffered by Dr. M[...], because he has blatantly misrepresented the studies available, as apparent by even a cursory review of the sources cited by him,” stated the court. “The Court must exercise its gatekeeping function to prevent a fact finder from hearing blatantly wrong and unreliable statements of purported science.” Therefore, the court excluded Dr. M’s rebuttal report.

As to Dr. B’s rebuttal report, the court noted that in support of his many claims, he cited only documents intrinsic to the case with no external sources of medical information or any methodology in evaluating the intrinsic sources that would support an expert opinion. According to the court, Dr. B did not introduce “any testimony relating to any method, the reliability of that method, any error rate, standards on control, whether the method is generally accepted, relationship of technique to that method, and uses of that method,” but rather simply stated that his professional judgment in these areas was based on a review of current scientific evidence and current information available of the impact of religious exemptions and masking on the spread of COVID-19. “That is not sufficient for if it were, anyone could read similar sources, fashion an opinion and purport their expertise,” concluded the court. Because Dr. B failed to meet the Daubert standard for reliability, his conclusions in his rebuttal report were also excluded.

The case is No. 22-4994.

Judge: Hodge, K.

Attorneys: John Alfons Daller (Daller Law) for Sara Slattery. Caren Litvin (Litvin Law Office) for Main Line Health, Inc., Main Line HealthCare, Inc. and Main Line Health Integrative and Functional Medicine Services.

Companies: Main Line Health, Inc.; Main Line HealthCare, Inc.; Main Line Health Integrative and Functional Medicine Services

Cases: Procedure Discrimination ReligiousDiscrimination Discharge Covid19 PennsylvaniaNews