Key Points

  • A student claiming religious discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act must prove, as part of the prima facie case, a bona fide religious belief that is sincerely held.
  • Sincerity is a question of fact that courts must decide through a credibility assessment, while the truth or validity of a religious belief remains outside the judicial sphere.
  • Courts may consider whether a claimant's words and deeds align with the claimed belief, including conduct the institution may not have known about, but may not substitute a perfect-performance test for the sincere-belief test.
  • Substantial evidence supported the trial court's finding that Andrew Perry refused the COVID-19 vaccine to keep his parents' financial support, not for religious reasons.
  • The court did not decide whether Dordt's denominational-statement and K-12 documentation requirements were lawful, or whether the trial court erred in refusing to reopen the record for damages evidence.

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a former Dordt University nursing student's religious-discrimination lawsuit over the school's refusal to exempt him from a COVID-19 vaccine requirement, holding that courts may decide whether a claimed religious objection is sincerely held.

The unanimous court, in an opinion by Justice May, affirmed a Sioux County district judge's finding after a bench trial that the student, Andrew Perry, did not hold a sincere religious objection to the vaccine. The trial judge, Robert D. Tiefenthaler, found that Perry's parents, particularly his mother, opposed the vaccine and that Perry refused it to keep their financial support.

The decision holds that a student suing under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which bars religion-based discrimination by educational institutions, must prove a sincerely held religious belief as part of the prima facie case. The court rejected Perry's argument that judges may never examine sincerity, treating it as a question of fact distinct from a belief's religious validity, which courts may not decide.

The dispute began in May 2021, when Dr. Deb Bomgaars, chair of Dordt's nursing department, told students that Avera Health, a medical provider where Dordt students completed required clinical rotations, would require the vaccine for students training there after July 1. The next day, Perry's mother, Gayln Perry, emailed Bomgaars about the vaccine's medical dangers and said she did not want her son to take it.

On May 19, Perry emailed Bomgaars unprompted. "I personally do not have a problem with the vaccine," he wrote. "The main issue revolves around my parents' beliefs and concerns." The trial court found that "Gayln threatened to cut off all financial assistance to Andrew if he received the COVID-19 vaccine," and that Perry was "100% financially dependent on his parents."

In October 2021, Bomgaars told Perry that all of Dordt's clinical partners would require the vaccine by the start of spring 2022 clinicals. On Nov. 8 he asked Aaron Baart, Dordt's chief of staff, what a religious exemption would require. Baart responded that Dordt required documentation of a published position by his denomination opposing vaccinations and proof of a religious exemption he had been granted in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Perry's parents sent Baart a four-page letter supporting an exemption on Nov. 11, three days before Perry submitted his own request. Perry's request rested on the belief, as the trial court summarized it, "that his body is a temple of God and that he must be a steward of his own body." Baart denied it on Dec. 2 because Perry had not supplied the required documents, and a later medical-exemption request was denied Dec. 31. Unable to complete clinicals at Dordt, Perry applied to 20 other programs and left after his junior year to attend Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Tiefenthaler found Perry not credible, citing his admissions that he had been drunk with friends and that he vapes nicotine, and noting that his mother had never threatened to cut him off over either. Perry testified at trial that he did not know whether he would have taken the vaccine with his mother's blessing, but said in a deposition that he likely would have. "Therefore, pleasing his parents and financing his continued education clearly seem to be more significant motivating factors than his alleged religious reason," the trial court wrote.

On appeal, May wrote that the sincerity inquiry "must be carefully limited to a 'credibility assessment,'" and agreed with the Fifth Circuit that it "must be handled with a light touch, or judicial shyness." Judges may not weigh a belief's truth or reasonableness, May wrote, and they must not reject a belief simply because it departs from the doctrine of a religious organization.

"Courts may not question the validity of religious principles. We cannot say what people should or should not believe," May wrote. "But courts may—and sometimes must—decide what someone actually believes."

Perry also argued that the trial judge improperly relied on his vaping and binge drinking, particularly because Dordt did not know about that conduct when it denied his request. The court disagreed. "It is true that courts must not replace the sincere-belief test with a pharisaical perfect-performance test," May wrote. The opinion quoted Judge Posner: "[A] sincere religious believer doesn't forfeit his religious rights merely because he is not scrupulous in his observance; for where would religion be without its backsliders, penitents, and prodigal sons?"

But the court held that judges may consider whether a claimant's words and deeds align with the claimed belief, including conduct Dordt may not have known about. May wrote that the trial judge did not make the drinking and vaping dispositive and instead "properly considered them as part of a much larger evidentiary picture." That evidence showed that Perry "was personally willing to take the vaccine" but knew the financial cost of defying his mother.

The justices declined to decide Perry's claim that Dordt acted illegally by requiring the denominational statement and school records. "We need not—and, therefore, we do not—resolve these concerns," May wrote. The court said it would affirm even if the requirements were improper, because the trial judge expressly said the sincerity finding did not rest on Perry's compliance with them.

The court drew the claim's elements from its 1983 decision in King v. Iowa Civil Rights Commission and cited 2026 rulings from the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Circuits describing analogous requirements under Title VII.

Alan R. Ostergren of Alan R. Ostergren, PC, argued for Perry. Nicholas B. McGrath of Jackson Lewis P.C. argued for Dordt.

Because the sincerity question was dispositive, the court did not reach Perry's other issue on appeal, whether the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to reopen the record after trial for additional damages evidence. The district court's judgment dismissing the suit stands.