Detwiler v. Mid-Columbia Med. Ctr., 2025 WL 2700000 (9th Cir. 2025)
Sherry M. Detwiler worked as a privacy officer and the Director of Health Information for a hospital (Mid-Columbia Medical Center) from September 2020, until her employment was terminated in December 2021. Detwiler is a practicing Christian who believes her body is a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and sincerely believes she has a “religious duty to avoid defiling her ‘temple’ by taking in substances that the Bible explicitly condemns or which could potentially cause harm to her body.” While employed, Detwiler sought a religious exemption from the hospital’s policy implementing the Oregon Health Authority’s administrative rule requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 absent an approved exemption. Relying upon sources she found on the Internet, Detwiler concluded that COVID-19 vaccines were created from fetal cell lines and contained “neurotoxins” and other potentially harmful substances.
The hospital approved Detwiler’s request for a religious exemption from vaccination, but she was required to wear personal protective equipment while in the office and to submit to weekly antigen testing for the virus. In response, Detwiler requested a further accommodation, seeking an exemption from the antigen testing because she had found “multiple sources” indicating that ethylene oxide (which is on the cotton swab inserted into the nostril for the antigen test) is a carcinogenic substance. Detwiler...
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