Dive Brief:
- A federal district court erred when it dismissed a religious discrimination claim alleging that hygiene and health company Essity refused to accommodate an employee’s request for exemption from its COVID-19 vaccination policy, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Monday.
- The plaintiff’s accommodation request stated that she “rejects the use of all vaccines generally, and the COVID-19 vaccines specifically,” adding that the Bible supported her decision to abstain from COVID-19 vaccines “due to the substances in them.” Essity’s HR director denied the request, citing the plaintiff’s rationale for refusal as based in “secular concerns” and said an exemption would pose undue hardship. Essity terminated the plaintiff, who brought race and religious discrimination claims against the company.
- The 4th Circuit held that the plaintiff’s objections were religious in nature and that a reasonable jury could find that she held a mixed motive for her vaccine refusal. As religious discrimination lawsuits over COVID-19 vaccination mandates advance, courts have scrutinized the sincerely held beliefs that plaintiffs often cite as the reason for their refusal to comply with such policies.
Dive Insight:
The district court granted summary judgment to Essity on all claims, but the 4th Circuit panel reversed 2-1 on the religious bias claim alone.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires that employers reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious, moral or ethical belief unless doing so would pose undue hardship, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In Wilkins-Bailey v. Essity Professional Hygiene N.A., LLC, the 4th Circuit determined that the plaintiff’s refusal to vaccinate — which stemmed in part from her belief that her body is her “temple” and that she could not put harmful things into it — was at least somewhat religious despite the fact that she stated her beliefs in “somewhat imprecise terms.” Such mixed secular and religious motives do not preclude Title VII’s protection, the court said.
Essity argued that, because the plaintiff believed that she could interpret the personal requirements of her religion, her refusal to vaccinate was the product of a “personal decision” and constituted a preference or choice not protected by Title VII. The court rejected this line of reasoning, noting that many religions permit and encourage adherents to discern or interpret official texts, while others have no centrally managed canons.
“This interpretation of Title VII would leave millions of religious Americans unprotected in their workplaces,” the 4th Circuit said. “Title VII protects even those religions which do not require strict adherence to a written catechism.”
However, the court stopped short of finding that Essity had not shown undue hardship, and it instructed the district court to determine this question in further proceedings. The U.S. Supreme Court clarified in its 2023 Groff v. DeJoy decision that, in order for a proposed religious accommodation to pose an undue hardship, it must present a burden that is substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business.
A lone dissenting judge wrote that he would have affirmed summary judgment for Essity on the plaintiff’s religious bias claim.
The 4th Circuit’s analysis is noteworthy in light of other recent COVID-19 vaccination policy cases alleging religious discrimination. Specifically, the 9th Circuit has issued multiple decisions weighing the religious nature of plaintiff’s claims.
In September 2025, a panel of the 9th Circuit held that an Oregon employee’s objection to such a policy was “personal and secular” rather than a bona fide religious belief, despite the plaintiff’s statement that a proposed antigen testing accommodation would have violated her belief that it was her Christian duty to “protect [her] body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.” The plaintiff’s petition for hearing en banc was denied, but the plaintiff has signaled that she will appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Conversely, the 9th Circuit allowed a former consultant for The Permanente Medical Group to proceed with a religious bias lawsuit over a similar policy despite her admission that she had received other vaccines in the past. This fact alone could not suffice as a reason to doubt the sincere religious nature of the employee’s request, the 9th Circuit held.