Employment – Defendants prevail on COVID-19 vaccination suit

Where two certified registered nurse anesthetists refused COVID-19 vaccinations, and their clinical privileges were then suspended by Inova Health Care
Services, their Title VII claims against Inova were dismissed. It was not their employer and was not liable under a joint employment doctrine.

Background

Inova Health Care Services suspended clinical privileges at its medical facilities for Kelly Hoffman and Lorraine Austin after they refused COVID-19 vaccinations. North American Partners in Anesthesiology, or NAPA, subsequently terminated plaintiffs’ employment.

In separate complaints, Hoffman and Austin both sued Inova for discrimination, and Hoffman also sued NAPA. The district court dismissed both complaints for failure to state a claim, finding that neither plaintiff plausibly alleged Inova was her employer and that Hoffman did not exhaust the administrative process before suing NAPA.

Inova

It is undisputed that NAPA, not Inova, formally employed plaintiffs. But “multiple entities may simultaneously be considered” an individual’s employer for purposes of Title VII under the “joint employment doctrine” adopted by this court. This court uses a nine-factor test to determine “which entities actually exercise control over an employee” such that they can rightly be considered an employer under Title VII.

Considering these factors, the court agrees with the district court that plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged that Inova
was their employer. Even accepting the complaints’ factual allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in plaintiffs’ favor, Inova did not have authority to hire and fire plaintiffs, did not exercise day-to-day supervision over them and was not responsible for their employment records.

As certified registered nurse anesthetists, plaintiffs’ duties were not akin to those of regular Inova employees. While Inova furnished equipment, facilities and some necessary training, those facts do not distinguish employees from non-employees in the setting of a hospital or surgical center. And although plaintiffs worked for years exclusively at Inova facilities, they did not subjectively intend to enter an employment relationship with Inova but instead knew that NAPA was their employer.

Exhaustion

Before pursuing a lawsuit under Title VII or the ADA, a plaintiff must exhaust her administrative remedies by filing a charge with the EEOC. Hoffman’s July 13 EEOC charge identifies Inova as the only employer who allegedly discriminated against her. It does not mention NAPA. Likewise, both right-to-sue notices were sent to Inova but not to NAPA.

After NAPA moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to exhaust, Hoffman asserted that she had submitted a letter to the EEOC on March 30, 2023, attempting to add a claim that NAPA also discriminated against her. In her letter, which Hoffman styled as an “Update and Amendment” to her original charge, Hoffman claimed that “NAPA engaged in discrimination against me along with the Inova Health System.” Hoffman appended NAPA’s contact information to her letter and uploaded the letter to the EEOC’s online portal. But Hoffman’s
formal charge of discrimination was never amended, and NAPA did not receive notice of any charges against it before Hoffman
filed suit.

The district court correctly ruled that Hoffman failed to administratively exhaust her claims again NAPA. Hoffman’s EEOC charge of discrimination, which limits the scope of her federal claims, did not name NAPA. The letter Hoffman sent to the EEOC eight months after her initial charge did not result in an amended charge or notice to NAPA.

Hoffman emphasizes that her letter to the EEOC was a conspicuous effort to amend her charge to add a discrimination claim against NAPA and that she used an appropriate channel for communicating with the agency. Even so, this court cannot read Hoffman’s private letter to the EEOC “as part of her formal discrimination charge without contravening [Title VII’s] purposes” to put employers “on notice [and] encourag[e] conciliation.”

Regarding her VHRA claim, Hoffman relies on the same letter to the EEOC, which she says would have been cross-filed with the Office of Civil Rights. That argument fails for the same reasons. In a footnote in her reply brief, Hoffman also states that she “filed an updated Complaint Questionnaire form with OCR on October 31, 2022,” citing to an unsigned and undated document. She offers nothing further about the import of this filing, thereby waiving any potential argument about this document multiple times over.

Affirmed.

Hoffman v. INOVA Health Care Services, Case Nos. 24-1510, 24-1518, March 3, 2026 4th Cir. (Rushing), from EDVA at
Alexandria (Nachmanoff). Timothy Bosson for Appellants. Nancy North Delogu and Scott Andrew for Appellees. VLW 026-2-071. 17 pp

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-071
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