The employer need not provide the employee’s preferred accommodation if there are multiple reasonable accommodation that would resolve the conflict between the vaccination requirement and the sincerely held religious belief without causing undue hardship. Another relevant consideration is the number of employees who are seeking a similar accommodation (i.e., the cumulative cost or burden on the employer).” Would accommodating the employee’s belief cause undue hardship?Īn employer need not accommodate a religious objection to a vaccine mandate if the employer concludes, after considering all reasonable accommodations, that doing so would cause an undue financial or operational hardship, meaning, under California law, that accommodating the employee would require “significant difficulty or expense.”Īn employer must evaluate undue hardship on a case-by-case basis and must be prepared to “demonstrate how much cost or disruption the employee’s proposed accommodation would involve.” Undue hardship should be evaluated using objective considerations, such as whether the employee works in group settings “or has close contact with other employees or members of the public (especially medically vulnerable individuals). The EEOC admonishes employers not to “assume that an employee is insincere simply because some of the employee’s practices deviate from the commonly followed tenets of the employee’s religion, or because the employee adheres to some common practices but not others.”įactors the EEOC says might undermine the credibility of an employee’s request for a religious exemption to a vaccine mandate include whether the employee previously has taken actions inconsistent with his professed belief and whether the request for a religious exemption is suspiciously close to a request for an exemption for secular reasons.Īn employer, though, should recognize that an employee’s religious beliefs may legitimately have evolved. The sincerity of the employee’s religious belief does not depend on whether the employee’s religion prohibits vaccination. Generally, simply worries about the health effects of the flu vaccine, disbelieves the scientifically accepted view that it is harmless to most people, and wishes to avoid this vaccine.” His refusal to get vaccinated because he believes it may harm him “is a medical belief, not a religious one.”
Said the court: “It does not appear that these beliefs address fundamental and ultimate questions having to do with deep and imponderable matters, nor are they comprehensive in nature. The employee believed that “if he yielded to coercion and consented to the hospital mandatory policy, he would violate his conscience as to what is right and what is wrong.”
The employee asserted in writing that he believed the vaccine would do his body more harm than good. Court of Appeals ruled that a hospital worker’s objection to a flu vaccine mandate was medical, not religious, in nature. The appellate court held that an employee’s veganism was insufficiently comprehensive to be characterized as anything more than a personal philosophy. First, a religion “addresses fundamental and ultimate questions” addressing “deep and imponderable matters.” Second, a religion is a comprehensive belief system rather than “an isolated teaching.” Third, a religion often has such “formal and external signs” as services or holidays. In a 2002 ruling, the California Court of Appeal identified three attributes religions tend to have. The EEOC reaffirms that “objections to COVID-19 vaccination that are based on social, political, or personal preferences, or on nonreligious concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine do not qualify as ‘religious beliefs’ under Title VII.” Court rulings provide guidance in distinguishing between religious and secular beliefs. An employee who fails to respond risks losing a later claim that the employer improperly denied an accommodation. An employer may ask the employee to explain how their religious beliefs conflict with the vaccine mandate. The EEOC says an employer generally “should assume that a request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief,” but need not accept such an assertion at face value.