In Lavelle-Hayden v. Employment Dept., (OR App., Dec. 18, 2024), an Oregon state appellate court held that a hospital respiratory therapist who was denied a religious exemption from the hospital's Covid vaccine requirement should receive unemployment benefits. It held that the state Employment Appeals Board's (EAB) conclusion that the employee's objection to the Covid vaccine was secular or personal in nature, rather than religious, was not supported by substantial evidence. The court said in part:
First, the EAB appears to have overlooked the Supreme Court’s injunction that tribunals ordinarily must refrain from assessing the plausibility of a claim of religious belief, and to have read the record with unreasonable parsimony in view of that standard....
Second, the EAB drew unreasonable inferences from the fact that claimant’s church declined to provide her a letter in support of her exemption request. The EAB inferred that “the fact that claimant’s own religious leader refused to provide a letter weighs to some extent against finding that claimant’s opposition to taking the vaccine was rooted in religion.” The EAB also inferred that the fact “that the leader told claimant it might be ‘too political to get involved’ supports an inference that when claimant asked for the letter, the religious leader regarded claimant’s objection to receiving a vaccine to be based on her political beliefs, not religion.”... But that reasoning ... presupposes that one’s religious beliefs and political beliefs are necessarily mutually exclusive....
... [T]here is no basis on which to sustain the denial of benefits that is consistent with the evidence and Free Exercise Clause.
