"Minnesota Appeals Court Decides 4 Cases on Religious Exemptions from Vaccine Mandates"

A post by Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause), which he kindly allowed me to pass along:

Yesterday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals decided four separate appeals from decisions of Unemployment Law Judges who denied unemployment benefits because an applicant refused on religious grounds to comply with an employer's Covid vaccine mandate. Goede v. Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, LP, (MN App., June 12, 2023), was the only one of the four cases published as a precedential decision. The court affirmed the ULJ's denial of benefits even though the state Department of Employment and Economic Development urged its reversal.  The court said in part:

The ULJ found that "Goede does not have a sincerely held religious belief that prevents her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine." The ULJ explained: "Goede's testimony, when viewed as a whole, shows by a preponderance of the evidence that Goede's concern is about some vaccines, and that she is declining to take them because she does not trust them, not because of a religious belief." The ULJ further stated that "[w]hen looking at the totality of the circumstances, Goede's belief that COVID-19 vaccines are not okay to put in her body is a personal belief not rooted in religion."

In Daniel v. Honeywell International, Inc., (MN App., June 12, 2023), the appellate court again upheld a denial of benefits, this time to a former employee who refused both the Covid vaccine and refused to comply with the employer's religious accommodation.  The court said in part:

Relator asserts that Honeywell's COVID-19 policy requiring that he get weekly COVID-19 tests and submit the results "required [him] to defy [his] religious faith." He asserts that he was upholding his religious faith "by practicing [his] God given right of 'control over [his] medical' by not subjecting Jesus Christ's temple to forcefully coerced medical treatments such as weekly PCR and/or rapid antigen test requirements."…

The ULJ found that relator lacked credibility because he provided inconsistent testimony and he struggled to explain his religious beliefs.

The court reversed the ULJ's denial of benefits in two other cases. In Benish v. Berkley Risk Administrators Company, LLC, (MN App., June 12, 2023) the court said in part:

The ULJ found that Benish made a "personal choice" to refuse the vaccine, but Benish did not testify to any personal reasons for refusing the vaccine. Instead, he consistently testified that his reason for refusing it was religious. The ULJ also placed improper weight on inconsistencies in Benish's religious beliefs and on the fact that the Pope had encouraged vaccination in determining that Benish's beliefs were not sincerely held….

… [W]e conclude that the ULJ's finding—that Benish did not have a sincerely held religious belief that precluded him from getting a COVID-19 vaccine—is unsupported by substantial evidence and must be reversed.

In Millington v. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, (MN App., June 12, 2023), the court reversed the ULJ's denial of benefits, saying in part:

Millington clearly and consistently testified regarding her religious reasons for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Millington's testimony concerning personal reasons for refusing the vaccine— that she already had COVID-19 and believed she did not need the vaccine and that she had concerns about the safety of the vaccine—are not sufficient to constitute substantial evidence.

In addition, although we generally defer to a ULJ's credibility findings, the ULJ's credibility finding in this case was based on at least two erroneous considerations. First, the ULJ erred by relying on the absence of direction from a religious leader to support a finding that Millington did not have a sincerely held religious belief…. Second, the ULJ failed to explain how Millington's use of over-the-counter medications or alcohol is pertinent to her objection to the COVID-19 vaccine based on its relationship to fetal cell lines. Consequently, the ULJ's credibility determination is not entitled to the same deference typically owed by an appellate court.