Dennison v. Bon Secours Charity Health System Medical Group, P.C.

Background

Donna Dennison, Catherine Gebert, and Shannon Cota were registered nurses employed by Bon Secours, which the opinion states is a member of Westchester Medical Center Health Network. Each worked in a patient-facing nursing position at a Bon Secours hospital or facility.

In August 2021, Westchester Medical Center Health Network announced a policy requiring all workforce members to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 30, 2021. Employees who did not comply would be suspended without pay and then terminated. The policy allowed limited medical and religious exemptions, although it did not explain their scope or approval criteria.

New York’s Department of Health separately adopted an emergency rule requiring covered health-care entities to require covered personnel to be fully vaccinated, except where a medical exemption applied. The rule did not provide for religious exemptions. The opinion states that the plaintiffs did not dispute that, as patient-facing nurses, they were covered personnel and did not claim medical exemptions.

Each plaintiff applied for a religious exemption based on her stated religious beliefs. The applications were denied on October 11, 2021. Dennison and Gebert were terminated on October 28 because they had not provided proof of vaccination or received an exemption. Cota, who was on approved short-term disability leave, was told she could not return without proof of vaccination and later received a termination letter citing the same reasons.

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants did not engage in a process to determine whether accommodations were possible, did not ask for more information about their beliefs, did not question the sincerity of their objections, and did not tell them that exemptions would create an undue hardship. They alleged that testing, masking, distancing, and sanitizing would have allowed them to continue working safely without vaccination.

Claim and legal standard

The plaintiffs asserted that the defendants violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by refusing to accommodate their sincerely held religious beliefs. Title VII generally requires an employer to reasonably accommodate a genuine religious practice that conflicts with a job requirement unless the accommodation would cause an undue hardship on the employer’s business.

The defendants moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. They did not dispute that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged the basic elements of a religious-discrimination claim. Instead, they argued that the requested accommodation would necessarily create an undue hardship because it would require them to violate New York’s vaccination rule and would threaten the health and safety of patients and employees.

Court’s reasoning

The court held that Title VII cannot require an employer to violate applicable law. At the time the defendants denied the exemptions, New York’s emergency rule required covered entities to continuously require covered personnel to be fully vaccinated unless they had medical exemptions. Because the plaintiffs sought to remain in their patient-facing nursing positions while unvaccinated, granting their requested exemptions would have violated the state rule.

The court distinguished between a religious exemption from the vaccination requirement and an accommodation that would remove an employee from the rule’s definition of covered personnel, such as a different work arrangement. The plaintiffs had not requested an arrangement that would remove them from that definition. The court therefore concluded that the requested blanket exemptions would impose an undue hardship as a matter of law. It also identified the health and safety risks of allowing unvaccinated patient-facing nurses to continue working as an additional hardship.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ reliance on temporary litigation concerning the state rule and on a later New York state-court decision questioning the Department of Health’s authority. The court stated that the later decision was nonbinding, had been stayed on appeal, and did not change whether the defendants’ actions in 2021 violated Title VII.

Disposition

The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ Title VII claim and granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The court declined to grant the plaintiffs leave to amend again, reasoning that they had already amended their complaint, had received notice of the alleged deficiencies, had not requested another amendment, and had not identified additional facts that would cure the problem. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the motion and close the case.