10-09-2025
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers implemented vaccine and testing requirements. Sherry Detwiler filed a religious discrimination claim based on her employer’s requirements. She was a privacy officer and the Director of Health Information for a hospital in Oregon. Detwiler states that she is a practicing Christian who believes “her body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” and sincerely believes she has a “religious duty to avoid defiling her temple by taking in substances that the Bible explicitly condemns or which could potentially cause physical harm to her body.”
During the pandemic, Detwiler sought a religious exemption for her employer’s requirement that she be vaccinated. The hospital approved the exemption, requiring her to wear personal protective gear while on the premises and to take weekly antigen tests for the virus. Detwiler wanted an exemption from the testing based on her understanding that the substance used to take her sample was a “carcinogenic substance” and allegedly violated her religious obligation to protect her body from defilement. The hospital refused this accommodation, and she sued.
The Ninth Circuit had not previously endorsed a test for whether a belief is religious or secular. In determining the case before it, the Court noted that it need not “accept entirely conclusory assertions of religious belief.” A plaintiff must plead “a sufficient nexus between her religious beliefs and the specific belief in conflict with the work requirement.” Broad assertions of religious tenets are insufficient alone to “convert a secular preference into a religious conviction.” Regarding Detwiler, the Court determined that she did not sufficiently identify a “bona fide religious belief” in conflict with the testing requirement. Her belief that the testing swab was harmful was “personal and secular, premised on her interpretation of medical research.” If not for this belief, she would have no objection to the testing. Her secular judgment was the sole basis of her objection. As a result, the Court concluded that she did not state a claim for religious accommodation.