Affirming the district court’s dismissal, for failure to state a claim, of an employment discrimination action under Title VII and the parallel Oregon state statute, the panel held that the plaintiff failed sufficiently to plead a bona fide religious belief that conflicted with her employer’s policy implementing the Oregon Health Authority’s administrative rule requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, absent an approved exemption.

The employer approved the plaintiff’s request for a religious exemption from vaccination. As part of that accommodation, it required the plaintiff to wear personal protective equipment while in the office and to submit to weekly antigen testing for COVID-19. The plaintiff sought a further accommodation of exemption from the weekly antigen testing on the basis that because her research showed that the testing swab was carcinogenic, its use would conflict with her Christian belief in protecting her body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. The employer, however, denied the plaintiff’s requested accommodations of saliva testing or full-time remote work and later terminated her employment.

The panel held that for a claim of religious discrimination, the plaintiff must first plead a prima facie case of failure to accommodate her religion. If she meets her burden, then the employer must show that it was nonetheless justified in refusing to accommodate. A plaintiff can meet her prima facie burden by demonstrating that she had a bona fide religious belief, the practice of which conflicted with an employment duty; she informed her employer of the belief and conflict; and the employer threatened her with or subjected her to discriminatory treatment, including discharge, because of her inability to fulfill the job requirements. Where an employee seeks an accommodation, she must plead facts sufficient to show that the accommodation request also springs from a bona fide religious belief. Looking to First Amendment doctrine, the panel held that the district court does not examine the sincerity or the reasonableness of a belief. Instead, the court need only determine if a plaintiff has pled enough facts to plausibly show that her belief is religious, rather than purely secular.

The panel concluded that the plaintiff’s complaint did not sufficiently articulate a bona fide religious belief in conflict with her former employer’s testing requirement because her belief that the antigen testing swab was carcinogenic was personal and secular, premised on her interpretation of medical research. Disagreeing with other circuits, the panel declined to adopt a lenient approach allowing a complaint to survive with merely conclusory statements about the religious nature of a belief. The panel concluded that the plaintiff, by asserting a general religious principle and linking that principle to her personal, medical judgment via prayer alone, did not state a claim for religious accommodation.

Dissenting, Judge VanDyke wrote that the majority adopted a flawed mode of analysis purporting to distinguish a category of purely secular claims incidentally linked to a general religious principle from a category of truly religious claims. Judge VanDyke wrote that he would follow other circuits and assume as true the plaintiff’s allegation that she requested a religious exemption from the COVID-19 testing requirement, her employer rejected that request, and she was fired because she declined to be tested. As pled, her religious beliefs plainly constituted a fundamental element of her objection to antigen testing.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/09/23/23-3710.pdf