Fiscal year 2025 brought a record number of EEOC religious-discrimination lawsuits. The agency filed 11 such cases during the fiscal year. Private litigants filed many more. Why? Because a 2023 Supreme Court decision made turning down a request for religious accommodations much harder, spurring more lawsuits.
The court ruled that before turning down a request, employers must show that approving it would create an undue burden on operations. Until 2023, all employers had to show was that approving the accommodation would have more than a de minimis impact on the employer. The Supreme Court now says employers must exhibit something more substantial—specifically, that “granting the accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”
But how substantial? That’s a question one recent federal court decision attempted to answer. The decision allows employers to finetune their religious-accommodations process to show whether they can legally reject the request.
The case: Carolyn worked for a hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her job was to admit patients to the hospital’s center for eating disorders. That means she greeted patients—often teen girls—and their parents and had a “long talk” with them on what to expect. It was not a job that could be performed remotely. It was urgent to keep the virus at bay because patients with eating disorders were especially at risk for serious complications or death should they become infected.
When the vaccine came out, all patient-facing employees were ordered to receive one. Carolyn refused and requested a religious accommodation of working from home. She was terminated. Others who requested similar religious accommodations were sometimes approved for remote work or offered transfers to non-patient-facing positions. Of 200 workers who requested religious exemptions from the vaccine, 24 were approved.
Carolyn sued. Now, a federal appeals court has upheld her termination. It reasoned that the employer had met the new undue hardship requirement. First, it said employers who consider all possible accommodations before turning down the request put their “best foot forward.”
The court also said religious accommodations can be turned down more easily than disability accommodations under the ADA, which requires employers to show a “significant difficulty or expense.” For example, employers can turn down a religious-accommodation request if they can show that making the accommodation “in the aggregate” would have a substantial impact. Employers should ask themselves, for example, what would happen if all Christian employees requested Sundays off? If the answer is that the production line could not be run or the restaurant could not serve brunch, that would create an undue burden.
The hospital won the case because it showed that if all 200 people who requested vaccine exemption were granted it, the hospital would not have been able to function. (Hall v. Sheppard Pratt Health, 4th Cir., 2025)
Proving undue hardship
Here’s what you need to do before claiming that approving religious accommodations would create an undue burden:
