Vaccine mandate takes BART for a $7.8 million ride: High bar for employer 'undue hardship' defense

California requires employers to reasonably accommodate workers’ sincerely held religious beliefs under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) unless doing so presents an undue hardship. In the wake of pandemic-era workplace mandates, public and private employers routinely relied on public health guidance and workplace safety concerns to justify denying religious exemption requests against the COVID-19 vaccination mandates. Though judges have frequently dismissed such claims, a jury rendered a multi-million dollar jury verdict for transit workers who were denied religious accommodations. Will the court uphold the award? 

An ultimatum for unvaccinated transit workers 

In October 2021, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) enacted a mandatory COVID19 vaccination policy requiring all employees to be vaccinated by December 13, 2021, unless granted a medical or religious exemption. BART’s Leave Management Department evaluated exemption applications and determined that 70 employees possessed sincerely held religious beliefs conflicting with the vaccine requirement. However, following a secondary review, BART concluded that it could not reasonably accommodate any of those 70 employees without suffering an “undue hardship.”