Reported / Citable
Background
Douglas Smith, a longtime Burbank Unified high-school science teacher and devout Christian, objected on religious grounds to the district’s COVID-19 employee vaccination mandate. The district granted his exemption but concluded that unvaccinated teachers could not work on campus safely. It offered unpaid leave; Smith instead proposed masking and weekly PCR testing. He remained on leave for about a year and later took a job at another school without a vaccine requirement.
Smith sued under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) for religious discrimination, failure to prevent discrimination, and retaliation. The trial court granted summary judgment to the district. The record showed that the district granted every exemption request and evaluated accommodations by job duties. A few employees working in isolated offices received testing, masking, barriers, and distancing, while teachers and others with frequent in-person contact received unpaid leave.
The Court’s Holding
In a published opinion, the Second District affirmed. It held that unpaid leave was a reasonable accommodation on the undisputed record and that allowing Smith to teach in person while unvaccinated would have imposed an undue hardship. The district presented evidence of repeated closures, illness, operational disruption, and its obligation to protect students and employees. Smith offered argument, but no competing evidence, to show that masking and testing would eliminate those burdens.
The court rejected the view that unpaid leave was automatically unreasonable because it separated unvaccinated employees from the workplace or deprived Smith of compensation. A reasonable religious accommodation need not be the employee’s preferred option, and leave can resolve the conflict by allowing full religious observance without requiring payment for work not performed. The district applied its approach consistently based on contact levels, not religion: all teachers with exemptions were treated alike, while alternative arrangements were confined to jobs that could be performed in isolation.
Key Takeaways
- Under FEHA, an employer may satisfy its religious-accommodation duty with a reasonable option even if the employee prefers a different arrangement.
- Unpaid leave is not categorically unreasonable; its adequacy depends on the work, the conflict, and the operational record.
- Evidence of health risks, closures, staffing disruption, and daily contact can establish undue hardship for an in-person accommodation.
- At summary judgment, an employee must counter the employer’s evidence with admissible facts, not merely argue that the asserted burden is overstated.
- Consistent treatment based on job functions—rather than the religious or medical basis for an exemption—can defeat an inference of intentional discrimination.
Why It Matters
This published decision gives California employers and employees important guidance beyond the pandemic. Accommodation disputes turn on job-specific evidence. Employers should document the interactive process, evaluate actual duties and contact levels, explain why alternatives would burden operations, and apply the same criteria across protected beliefs and conditions. A blanket conclusion unsupported by evidence remains risky.
Employees challenging an offered accommodation should develop evidence showing that a workable alternative would remove the conflict without undue hardship. The decision does not declare unpaid leave reasonable in every case; it holds that it was reasonable on this record, where in-person teaching was central to the job and the employee did not rebut the district’s operational and safety evidence.