Although the court certified a class of employees who were denied or delayed requests for religious exemptions from mandated COVID-19 vaccination by the University of Virginia Health System because they were not members of established religions, it denied certification of two other putative classes.
Plaintiffs move for class certification in this Title VII action which claims that the University of Virginia Health System discriminated against them by denying their requests for religious exemptions from the mandated COVID-19 vaccination. They seek to certify three classes challenging the procedures UVA Health used to evaluate religious exemption requests: (1) the “Disfavored Religions Class,” (2) the “Abortion Objectors Class” and (3) the “Failure-to-Accommodate Class.”
Defendants first argue that plaintiffs failed to exhaust their administrative remedies as to any pattern-or-practice claim because none of the named plaintiffs’ EEOC charges identified a broader discriminatory policy. Instead, Plaintiffs’ EEOC charges merely described “their individual circumstances and requests for accommodation.”
In the context of class actions or “pattern or practice” claims, courts are divided as to whether individual claims of discrimination in an EEOC charge are sufficient to support a future class action. The Fourth Circuit has not addressed the issue directly except to note that an EEOC charge should “provide sufficient notice of the collective nature of [a...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...