In a recent unpublished decision issued on September 23, 2025, the Ninth Circuit ruled that a plaintiff must sufficiently plead a bona fide religious belief, not one based on personal interpretations of their belief, exemption for religious discrimination claims under Title VII.
In Detwiler v. Mid-Columbia Med. Ctr., No. 23-3710, 2025 WL 2700000 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2025), plaintiff Sherry M. Detwiler brought a religious discrimination claim under Title VII and the parallel Oregon state statute against her employer, Mid-Columbia Medical Center (“MCMC”), a hospital in Oregon. During the COVID-19 pandemic, MCMC required its employees, and Detwiler, to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless an employee had an approved exemption. Ms. Detwiler, a Christian, argued that, based on her research from online sources, the COVID-19 vaccines contained fetal cell lines, certain neurotoxins, and carcinogens. She informed MCMC she could not take the vaccine because her body is “a temple” and required an exemption from the vaccine. MCMC approved her request but asked Detwiler to submit to weekly COVID-19 antigen testing. Detwiler again argued against such testing because, according to her own online research, the antigen testing contained carcinogens. She requested to work from home and conduct nasal swab testing instead. MCMC denied her accommodation request, and upon Ms. Detwiler’s failure to submit to antigen testing, terminated her employment.
Ms. Detwiler sued MCMC the basis of religious discrimination. The district court dismissed Detwiler's operative complaint for failure to state a prima facie case for religious discrimination. One of the elements that a plaintiff must demonstrate as part of the prima facie case for religious discrimination is a “bona fide religious belief, the practice of which conflicted with an employment duty.” When an employee seeks an accommodation, they must plead facts sufficient to show the accommodation request springs from a bona fide religious belief. The district court held that Ms. Detwiler’s beliefs were secular, not religious. Ms. Detwiler appealed. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling, agreeing with the lower court’s reasoning that Ms. Detwiler’s belief was personal and secular, premised on her interpretation of medical research, not religious belief. Merely invoking the words that her body was a temple or that she was Christian was not enough to establish she had a bona fide religious exemption.
How does one’s belief fall either into the secular or religious category? The Ninth Circuit did not explicitly outline or endorse a test to on how to determine whether someone’s belief is secular or religious in nature. But the Court confirmed that lower courts do not need to accept entirely conclusory assertions of religious belief. The Court did note that a plaintiff need not establish their belief is consistent, widely held, or even rational, however, a complaint must connect the requested exemption with a truly religious principle. Invocations of broad, religious tenets cannot, on their own, convert a secular preference into a religious conviction. The Court reasoned that to hold otherwise would likely destroy the pleading standard for religious discrimination claims, allowing complainants to invoke “magic words” and survive a dismissal without stating a prima facie case.
Following Detwiler, employers should be careful when evaluating an employee’s request for religious exemptions. The Detwiler ruling does give employers more room to deny an exemption if it is based in secular beliefs, but denials can still lead to litigation.
