If you're going to refuse Covid-19 shots on religious grounds, you have to define just what in your religion prohibits them when you sue your employer for firing you, judge rules

A federal judge today dismissed a Milton Hospital office manager's suit over getting fired for refusing Covid-19 shots because the woman initially failed to provide any details about her religious beliefs and why those barred her from getting vaccinated, but that even after she did, she failed to prove her right to practice her religion outweighed the hospital's right to do everything it could to protect its patients and other staffers from a deadly pandemic.

US District Court Judge Angel Kelley had already dismissed most of Amanda Bazinet's suit against the hospital last month - including a charge the hospital wanted to commit assault and battery against her - but gave her attorney more time to argue why the hospital should have provided "reasonable accommodations" for her vaguely described religious beliefs, for example, by letting her instead wear a mask and undergo regular testing instead of making her get a shot as recommended by medical experts, including doctors at her own hospital.

In her ruling today, Kelley said Bazinet's attorney, Richard Chambers - who has been representing numerous other people in various Covid-19-related suits - failed to make his case, both because he and his client failed to show "a bona fide religious practice [that] conflicts with an employment requirement" initially, but that even when they finally submitted more details after her ruling last month, they failed to show why bowing to her wishes would not in turn create "an undue hardship" on the hospital, its employees and its patients in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The complaint only contains conclusory statements which are insufficient in order to state a claim. See Griffin v. Massachusetts Dep't of Revenue ("a simple ipse dixit by the plaintiff - 'this employment requirement conflicts with my religion' - is not sufficient to allege such a claim. A stated claim of religious belief, without more, cannot grant an individual 'a blanket privilege 'to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests") .

Kelly continued that a supplemental filing late in the judicial game was not the place to finally describe those beliefs in detail, but that in the end, they didn't matter in this case:

Plaintiff attaches to her supplemental brief a letter she sent her employer previously that described the religious objections she shared with her employer in greater detail. ... However, even if the Court were to consider those documents, or even if the Court were to review them after permitting Plaintiff to amend her complaint a second time, Plaintiff's claim would still not be viable because there is no accommodation that Plaintiff could have offered that would not have caused them to suffer an undue hardship. As the First Circuit has found, due to the strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitals, such exemptions would have caused an undue burden on the employer.

Kelley cited a 2021 ruling by another federal judge in Boston - later upheld by a federal appeals court - declining to order Mass General Brigham to immediately rehire employees and doctors who refused shots, in part because the hospital network is "essentially in the business of providing medical care to patients, many of whom are medically vulnerable to COVID-19 infection."

In her earlier ruling dismissing most of Bazanet's case, Kelley also cited a 1905 Supreme Court ruling, involving a Cambridge father during a smallpox outbreak, that during a health emergency, public-health measures can take priority over rights people normally have, such as the right to refuse medical treatment.