In Rodriguez v. Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, (ND CA, Nov. 12, 2024), a California federal district court refused to dismiss a suit brought by employees of a public transportation provider who were denied religious exemptions from their employer's Covid vaccine mandate. The court ordered the parties to submit supplemental briefs on whether or not the vaccine mandate exemption process was generally applicable in order to determine whether to apply strict scrutiny in evaluating plaintiffs' Free Exercise claim. The court said in part:
Although the VTA’s exemption review process did not involve the entirely unfettered discretion that the Supreme Court rejected in Fulton, a reasonable factfinder could conclude that this process contained enough individualized discretion to “permit discriminatory treatment of religion or religiously motivated conduct.” ...
Conversely, a reasonable factfinder could conclude that the exemption process was “tied directly to limited, particularized, business-related, objective criteria” such that it was generally applicable..... Unlike Fulton, no individual here exercised “sole discretion.”.... Instead, the committee rendered decisions as a group based on set criteria.... A reasonable jury could find that the VTA committee exercised a degree of discretion that preserved the policy’s general applicability.
