UVA Health’s COVID Vaccine Exemption Policy Certified as Class-Wide Religious Discrimination Under Title VII

The court granted class certification only for the "Disfavored Religions Class," which includes employees who were not members of UVA Health’s six "established religions" and suffered adverse employment action as a result. The court denied certification for two other proposed classes: the "Abortion Objectors Class" and the "Failure-to-Accommodate Class."

The underlying dispute centers on UVA Health’s 2021 vaccine mandate for Tier 1 employees. Under that policy, training materials instructed the Religious Exemption Committee to approve exemption requests from adherents of six designated faiths if there was "no reason to suspect dishonesty." Requests from employees outside those listed faiths were forwarded for further scrutiny.

Plaintiffs, who lost their jobs after declining the vaccine and having their exemption requests denied, alleged that this procedure violated Title VII by treating some religious beliefs as more valid than others. The court found that statistical evidence supported a pattern of discrimination: UVA Health granted all exemption requests from individuals identifying with the six listed religions, but granted only four of 397 requests that did not reference those faiths.

Judge Ballou held that this standardized procedure raised a central legal question common to all class members: whether the exemption process violated Title VII. Because this question could be answered in one stroke using common facts, the court found that common questions of law and fact predominated over individual issues.

The court declined to extend classwide relief to Defendant UVA Imaging, noting that plaintiffs had not moved for certification against it and the record was insufficient to resolve joint employment status at this stage.

Certification for the Abortion Objectors Class was denied because plaintiffs failed to point to a facially discriminatory policy governing abortion-based objections. The court found that the record showed UVA Health evaluated these requests for sincerity individually, and adjudicating them would require employee-by-employee inquiries into varying beliefs.

The Failure-to-Accommodate Class was also denied because resolving those claims would require individualized assessments of each employee’s religious sincerity, the religious nature of their beliefs, and whether accommodating them would impose an undue hardship on UVA Health.