Employment: Inova Health prevails on COVID-19 non-vaccination suits

Where three employees alleged that Inova Health failed to accommodate their religious beliefs in connection with their refusal to become vaccinated against COVID-19, but one employee did not assert beliefs that were sincerely held, another failed to present facts showing her vaccine-related beliefs are religious and the employees could have complied with the policy notwithstanding their beliefs, the employer prevailed on the claims.

Background

In 2021, Inova Health Care Services added the COVID-19 vaccine to its Immunization Program Policy, or IPP, rendering it a required vaccine for its employees. Leanne Stynchula, Adam Netko and Tigist Birke—all Inova employees—sought religious exemptions from this requirement, which Inova ultimately denied. Stynchula, Netko and Birke now seek to recover under Title VII for Inova’s alleged failure to accommodate their religious beliefs. Inova has filed motions for summary judgment.

Standard

To prevail on a Title VII failure-to-accommodate claim, a plaintiff must first prove that: “(1) he or she has a bona fide religious belief that conflicts with an employment requirement; (2) he or she informed the employer of this belief; [and] (3) he or she was disciplined for failure to comply with the conflicting employment requirement.” “If the employee establishes [such] a prima facie case, the burden then shifts to the employer to show that it could not reasonably accommodate the plaintiff’s religious needs without undue hardship.”

Netko

Inova argues that Netko’s claim fails because his requests for religious exemptions from the COVID vaccine requirement did not assert beliefs that he sincerely held. The court agrees.

Both before and after objecting to Inova’s COVID-19 vaccine policy, Netko’s practice with respect to medicines and vaccines developed using fetal cell lines “[was] inconsistent. He puts some medicines in his body, but not others” and thus he has severely contradicted his assertion that he could not receive a COVID-19 vaccine without compromising his religious beliefs.

Netko’s assertion that his religion prevented him from taking such vaccines “appears to have been newly adopted only in response to the demand that [he] take the COVID-19 vaccine,” which is consistent with his general hostility to authority with respect to the COVID pandemic as a whole.

Stynchula

Stynchula has not presented facts that show her vaccine-related beliefs are religious. She simply engages in a cost-benefit analysis of vaccines and medications rooted in her personal concerns over their safety and efficacy. Attaching a gloss of “general moral commandment[s],” such as beliefs in personal liberty or that the body is a temple, to these concerns cannot alone render them religious.

Stynchula’s July 12, 2022 supplemental objections to the use of “aborted fetal tissue” in the “development, production,” and / or “testing” of the COVID vaccines cannot resuscitate her claim. Stynchula did not identify any abortion-related concerns in her first three exemption requests. On all of this, there can be no genuine issue as to the secular nature of Stynchula’s vaccination objections.

Separate from religiosity, there is also no dispute of material fact as to whether Stynchula’s fetal cell line beliefs were sincerely held. While she repeatedly states she has not received any vaccines for 30 years, she has not presented any evidence that she ever objected to other vaccines or medicines on abortion-related (as opposed to health-related) grounds. The fact that Stynchula raised her fetal cell line objection only with her final exemption appeal is a textbook example of “timing [that] renders [the request] suspect.”

Inova’s policy

Inova next argues that both Stynchula and Birke’s claims fail as a matter of law because there is no genuine dispute that they could have complied with both Inova’s COVID vaccination policy and the religious beliefs they communicated once Novavax became available. This is because (1) they did not believe that Novavax offended their fetal cell line beliefs and voiced no concerns with Novavax after Inova presented the option to them and (2) there is no admissible evidence establishing an issue of fact as to whether Novavax was in fact “tested” on fetal cell lines. These arguments are well-founded and entitle Inova to summary judgment on both Stynchula and Birke’s claims.

Defendant’s motions for summary judgment granted.

Stynchula v. Inova Health Care Services, Case Nos. 1:23-cv-01629, 1:23-cv-01630, 1:23-cv-01643, Nov. 19, 2024. EDVA at Alexandria (Nachmanoff). VLW 024-3-628. 38 pp.