Federal Discrimination Lawsuit by Advocates for Faith and Freedom Against Kaiser

It looks like the Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente health care giant was casually violating federal law by denying religious employees exemptions to the company COVID vaccine mandate.

In an announcement that received scant attention,  the EEOC Los Angeles office said on June 12 that Kaiser was paying $358,000 to settle 12 different claims of discrimination for denying religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate.

The EEOC said Kaiser was questioning the sincerity of the religious objections that employees were voicing to the vaccine mandate.  As part of the settlement, Kaiser agreed to follow federal law that generally requires accommodations for religious employees.

“We commend Kaiser for enacting corrective measures that will have a lasting impact on workers seeking religious accommodations in the workplace,” said Christine Park-Gonzalez, director of the EEOC’s Los Angeles District. “Federal law requires that employers provide reasonable religious accommodations unless it poses an undue hardship that is substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business, and the EEOC will continue to enforce that all-important statue.”

But Kaiser is facing other legal liabilities.

Just two weeks after the EEOC announcement, Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed a federal discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a Christian woman fired from the Kaiser Medical Center in Roseville after the company blithely denied her request for a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate.

In the case of former medical assistant Sarah Plath, the EEOC had already determined that Kaiser violated her rights and issued her a right to sue letter.

The lawsuit, which charges Kaiser with violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, paints a picture of the company as seething with contempt for religious people. It says  Plath was bullied by other employees with no intervention from management when she voiced her sincere religious objections to the vaccine mandate.

“This case is about more than one employee losing her job,” said Sam Kane, Senior Legal Counsel at Advocates for Faith & Freedom. “It is about whether Americans can still live and work according to their sincerely held religious convictions without being punished by corporate gatekeepers. No employer should be allowed to force a faithful Christian to choose between her conscience and her livelihood – especially when reasonable accommodations were available.”

Advocates for Faith and Freedom lawyer Erin Mersino told the California Globe that “a person’s ability to live out their faith in the workplace is at stake” in the lawsuit.

Mensino said the EEOC settlement illustrates Kaiser’s mistreatment of religious workers that her client is fighting.

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s recent settlement with Kaiser Permanente is a meaningful and overdue acknowledgment of a pattern of disregard for the sincerely held religious convictions of its workers,” she emailed. “It confirms what Advocates for Faith & Freedom is fighting for: that Title VII requires employers to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs, practices, or observances unless doing so would impose an undue hardship that is substantial in the overall context of the employer’s business. Employers may not simply second-guess the sincerity of an employee’s faith, nor may they impose blanket denials without evidence and a genuine interactive process.”

“A settlement of this kind, while potentially valuable for future compliance and for the twelve parties it directly affects, does not remedy the real harms suffered by every employee who lost employment, income, and professional standing after seeking to live according to conscience. Our client Sarah Plath is one such person.  It is important that our case moves forward to seek justice for her.  We therefore view the EEOC settlement as an important validation of the legal principles at stake and a constructive step toward better workplace practices going forward. We also recognize its limits. For Sarah Plath and others who have not yet obtained any redress, the fight continues.

Mersino said Kaiser did not even give Plath a reason for denying her request for religious accommodation. “It appears that they didn’t take her request seriously.

She was terminated after bringing forth her concerns about religious discrimination.”

The lawsuit says that Plath, who had worked at Kaiser for 10 years until the company tried to force the vaccine on her in 2021, is a “devout and practicing Christian” whose faith is “the central part of her life and identity.”

Plath believes that “the COVID-19 vaccines utilize the aborted fetal cell lines during their production and testing and are therefore unethical and immoral to take.”

She also objects to vaccines because she believes that her “body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit” and therefore “abstains from introducing anything into her body that she determines could harm or defile it.”

Based on these objections, Plath requested a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate on August 21, 2021. She also included a letter from her pastor explaining her objections.

On September 21, Kaiser emailed Plath and said they had “provisionally” approved her request for an exemption.

But on October 23, Kaiser emailed Plath and demanded answers to more questions to determine if she really had religious objections to the vaccine.

“The email [from Kaiser] included eight questions about Mrs. Plath’s religious beliefs.  On October 27, 2021, Mrs. Plath responded, providing answers to each of the questions describing in detail her religious opposition to receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. Mrs. Plath’s answers further detailed her belief that the vaccinations were derived using aborted fetal cells and that she never has, or would, knowingly take any medication developed in such a manner because to do so would violate her religious beliefs. “

Meanwhile, while the back and forth was going on, other employees started haranguing Plath about her religious objections to the vaccine.

“During this time numerous other Kaiser employees made derogatory statements regarding Mrs. Plath’s religious beliefs. This included a doctor loudly stating so that all employees in the room could hear, that everyone who did not get vaccinated and who applied for a religious exemption should be terminated

“Mrs. Plath reported this harassment to management but, to the best of her knowledge, no remedial action was taken.”

On November 20, Kaiser emailed Plath and said her request for a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate was being denied.

No explanation for the denial was offered.

She was told to provide proof of vaccination by January 3, 2022  or she would be fired the following week.

Refusing to get vaccinated, she was fired on January 10.

The lawsuit says that, “Rather than respecting Mrs. Plath’s religious beliefs, Kaiser summarily denied her religious accommodation request without providing any explanation or reason for doing so and otherwise failed to comply with state and federal law.”

The complaint says Kaiser is also  guilty of illegal retaliation under federal and California law because they fired her for voicing religious objections to the vaccine.

“Mrs. Plath engaged in a protected activity by requesting a religious accommodation from Kaiser’s vaccine policy. She engaged in further protected activity by voicing her complaints that her religious beliefs were not being taken seriously, and she was being discriminated against.”

“Kaiser terminated Mrs. Plath because she engaged in protected activity when she refused to get the COVID-19 vaccination due to her religious [beliefs] and complaint about the discrimination she was facing.”

The Kaiser press office did not reply to a request for comment,

Attorney Erin Mersino says Kaiser’s response to the lawsuit is due on September 14.