Summary of facts: Eight firefighters in Washington State were put on unpaid leave by their employer Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue (SRFR) after requesting a religious exemption from a Washington Covid vaccination mandate. SRFR denied the firefighters’ requests for religious accommodation, even though the firefighters submitted to various risk mitigation measures, including masking, testing, and social distancing. SRFR claimed that allowing the firefighters to work unvaccinated would pose an undue hardship, given possible health and safety risks, despite that this same risk existed whenever firefighters served in mutual aid scenarios with unvaccinated firefighters. Faced with indefinite, unpaid leave, the firefighters found work with neighboring fire departments within Snohomish County and districts outside the county, which had no issue accommodating them. And eight months after pulling the firefighters off the line, SRFR’s fire chief decided to bring the firefighters back to work, still unvaccinated. The firefighters resumed their jobs and continued to work unvaccinated, without causing any operational difficulties or added expense. The firefighters sued in federal court for religious discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. SRFR filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that accommodating the firefighters’ request would have created an “undue hardship.” The district court agreed and granted summary judgment to SRFR. The firefighters appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed, concluding that SRFR satisfied its burden to establish an undue hardship as a matter of law under the Supreme Court’s decision in Groff v. Dejoy. The firefighters are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.

RFI’s position: While at least three circuits abide by Groff and hold that an employer must provide concrete proof that an accommodation would cause an undue hardship, three circuits—including the Ninth Circuit—defer to the employer’s “reasonable concerns” based on hypothetical or speculative burdens an accommodation may create. The Ninth Circuit’s deferential “reasonable concern” approach threatens to return Title VII’s undue hardship standard back to its pre-Groff era, when employers overwhelmingly denied reasonable accommodations to minority-faith Americans with little proof. Indeed, the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit and the other circuits on the same side of the split bears a striking resemblance to the reasoning of courts that applied the de minimis standard before Groff. The Supreme Court should therefore agree to hear the firefighters’ case to ensure that Title VII and its protections for minority faith workers are not watered down yet again.

Read the brief here.