The ruling also exposes a costly EEOC mistake that HR teams must avoid
A healthcare company's vaccine mandate did not make it the joint employer of outside clinical staff, a federal appeals court ruled March 3, 2026.
The case started the way many workplace disputes do: a policy, a refusal, and a termination. Two nurse anesthetists, Kelly Hoffman and Lorraine Austin, lost their clinical privileges at Inova Health Care Services facilities in Virginia after they sought exemptions from the company's Covid-19 vaccination requirement, were denied, and then refused to be vaccinated. North American Partners in Anesthesia, or NAPA – the anesthesiology company that formally employed them – let them go about two months later. The nurses then sued, arguing that Inova shared responsibility for what happened to them.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit disagreed.
Hoffman and Austin were Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists employed by American Anesthesiology of Virginia, a NAPA subsidiary. Under a service contract, American Anesthesiology provided anesthesia staff exclusively to Inova facilities. Hoffman had worked there for five years; Austin for twenty. When Inova denied their exemption requests in 2022 and suspended their clinical privileges at its facilities, both nurses argued that the company's role in their professional lives was substantial enough to make it their employer too – a legal concept known as joint employment.
The court was not persuaded.
To...
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