Ninth Circuit Upholds PJI’s $7.8 Million Religious Discrimination Verdict Against BART

Federal appeals court affirms jury verdict for six employees denied religious accommodations to COVID-19 vaccine mandate

SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld Pacific Justice

Institute's (PJI) $7.8 million jury verdict against the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), affirming that the transit agency failed to accommodate six employees with sincere religious objections to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

In its Sept. 11 published opinion in Lewis-Williams v. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit

District, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The appellate court rejected BART's attempt to overturn the jury verdict or obtain a new trial, concluding that sufficient evidence supported the employees' claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

The decision preserves a $7,824,580 award to former BART employees Tonya Lewis-Williams, Raymond Lockett, Rosalind Parker, Bradford Mitchell, Ryan Rivera and Szu-Cheng Sun. Each received more than $1 million after a federal jury found that BART failed to accommodate their religious objections to vaccination.

The case began after BART imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in 2021. Employees could request religious exemptions, but the agency ultimately provided no accommodation to any of the 70 employees it determined were eligible for one. Across BART's exemption and accommodation process, 73 employees who sought religious exemptions lost their jobs.

Six employees represented by PJI proceeded to trial in October 2024. A federal jury found that BART had not proven that accommodating their religious beliefs would have caused an undue hardship and awarded the employees a combined $7,824,580. BART appealed, arguing that the verdict should be overturned or a new trial ordered.

The Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments.

Under Title VII, employers must reasonably accommodate an employee's religious practices unless doing so would impose an undue hardship. In Groff v. DeJoy, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer must show a substantial burden in the overall context of its business to establish undue hardship. Applying that standard, the Ninth Circuit concluded that BART needed to show that alternatives to vaccination would impose a substantial, excessive or unjustifiable burden. Showing that vaccination provided greater protection was not enough.

The court also rejected BART's argument that its reliance on public health guidance established undue hardship. The opinion noted that the public health guidance BART claimed to have relied upon was not entered into the trial record. The jury was also entitled to consider whether alternatives such as masking and social distancing could have accommodated the employees without imposing an undue hardship.

PJI attorneys Kevin Snider and Matt McReynolds, along with attorney Gage Fender, represented the employees before the Ninth Circuit. All three participated in oral argument before the appellate court in April.

"We are gratified that these commuter rail workers are nearing the last stop of their long journey toward justice," Snider said. "In view of the devastating upheaval to their lives for these last number of years, no one can question the sincerity of their religious convictions."

"These employees were willing to continue working, and reasonable alternatives were available based on the evidence presented at trial," McReynolds said. "BART chose termination instead. This ruling sends a clear message that employers must take religious accommodation seriously and must prove an actual undue hardship before denying accommodation."

The Ninth Circuit distinguished the BART employees from workers in other recent vaccine-mandate cases involving firefighters and health care professionals. The court noted that BART is in the transportation business and that the six employees' jobs involved limited close contact with the public or co-workers. The record also contained no evidence that they were unwilling or unable to use masking or other precautions.

The panel concluded that a reasonable jury could find that accommodating the employees would not have imposed a substantial, excessive or unjustifiable burden on BART. Because undue hardship requires a fact-specific inquiry, the court declined to substitute its judgment for the jury's assessment of the evidence.

Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson wrote separately to address the employees' claim under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The majority did not reach that claim because affirming the employees' successful Title VII and state-law claims made their cross-appeal on the issue moot.

Nelson nevertheless called the district court's treatment of the free exercise claim "troubling" and wrote that the lower court had applied the wrong standard when analyzing BART's discretionary exemption process. Citing the Ninth Circuit's en banc decision in Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School District Board of Education, Nelson wrote that government policies allowing individualized, discretionary exemptions can trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny.

Nelson also criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith and argued for stronger constitutional protection of religious exercise.

PJI Founder and President Brad Dacus said the decision vindicates employees who refused to abandon their faith to keep their jobs.