Eight Snohomish firefighters are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify what an employer is required to prove under federal law before denying a religious accommodation for vaccines.
Several attorneys filed a petition last Thursday, asking the court to review a 2024 Ninth Circuit ruling siding with Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue. The agency denied the firefighters’ vaccine exemptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that granting them would have caused SRFR undue hardship.
Cliff Martin, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, told The Center Square this isn’t about securing vaccine accommodations years after the fact; it’s about clarifying a split in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
A 2023 SCOTUS ruling requires employers to show that approving a Title VII religious accommodation would create undue hardship to deny the exemption. The Ninth Circuit and two other appellate courts only require a reasonable concern of that hardship, while three others require proof of actual hardship.
“It’s a technical issue about the application of the undue hardship defense that an employer has to an accommodation case,” Martin told The Center Square in an interview. “So, we don’t see this so much as a COVID case … because it’s going to apply to all religious accommodation requests going forward.”
Martin said it could be months before SCOTUS decides whether to consider the petition. If it agrees to take up their case, the outcome could have major impacts on other religious accommodation lawsuits.
He wants SCOTUS to require proof that approving the firefighters’ vaccine accommodation would have caused SRFR to suffer undue financial hardship. Doing so could reverse the Ninth Circuit’s 2024 ruling and send their lawsuit back to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington for a trial.
SRFR had argued in federal court that allowing the firefighters to continue working unvaccinated would pose a safety risk to the rest of the agency and the public. It also claimed that exemptions would have caused operational burdens, since a total of 46 of 192 firefighters requested vaccine accommodations.
The eight plaintiffs went on leave in October 2021 and returned in May 2022, after the agency granted vaccine accommodations once the pandemic largely settled, without back pay for about seven months.
They filed a lawsuit in district court the following November, seeking back pay and financial damages.
“These individuals went to nearby fire departments and worked for the whole eight months that they were laid off,” Martin said. “Clearly, you’re able to accommodate them, because you did accommodate them eight months later. Yet still, the Ninth Circuit said, ‘No, we’re letting them completely off the hook."”
According to the petition, one of the plaintiffs even provided mutual aid to SRFR after it had laid him off and he was working for another agency, despite SRFR having denied his religious accommodation.
Martin said the circuit courts’ split interpretation of the 2023 SCOTUS ruling could have arisen in any accommodation request. For example, a Jewish employee could request Saturdays off to worship, and a judge could allow an employer to deny the request if they claim it might create an undue hardship.
“Under the Ninth Circuit, maybe that’s enough, but we would hope the Supreme Court says, ‘No, you need more than a reasonable concern. You need to have evidence,"” Martin said. “If [SCOTUS] doesn’t grant this petition… your experience of religious accommodation law will change based on geography.”
An SRFR spokesperson declined comment for this article, citing ongoing and pending litigation.