Labrador Letter: Defending Employees’ Religious Freedom at the Supreme Court

Dear Friends,

The Ninth Circuit recently ruled that a medical center employee’s sincerely held belief did not count as religion, even though the court never questioned her sincerity. Its rulings bind every federal court in Idaho, which is why I led a coalition of 18 states, Puerto Rico, and the Arizona Legislature in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Detwiler v. Mid-Columbia Medical Center and reverse that decision.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sherry Detwiler asked her employer, Mid-Columbia Medical Center, for a religious accommodation from its nasal-swab testing requirement based on her religious convictions, and she offered an alternative method of testing. The medical center denied her request and fired her. She sought protection under Title VII, the federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees because of their religion.

The court called her belief a secular medical opinion because it rested on a broad religious principle and required her to weigh facts about the testing. Under that ruling, an Idaho employee who applies his faith to a decision at work could now face the same flawed analysis.

The Supreme Court has long held that courts must not determine the place of a particular belief within a religion. A court does not have to agree with a person’s faith or with the conclusion he reaches when he applies it, but deciding which sincere convictions count as religion is outside its authority. Idaho and the coalition argue that courts have no authority to decide which beliefs qualify as religious based on whether they are broad or narrow, or whether applying them requires the believer to consider facts on the ground.

People of faith do not leave their beliefs at home when they go to work. Every day, Idahoans apply the principles of their faith to real decisions on the job, guided by scripture, prayer, and conscience. Those principles are often broad, because scripture does not come with an instruction manual for every situation a person will face, and living by those principles means weighing the facts in front of you. Under the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning, that ordinary process of applying faith to real circumstances is enough to lose the law’s protection.

The government does not have to agree with someone’s faith, or the conclusions a person reaches when applying that faith to the circumstances of his life.  The government doesn’t need to give permission to anyone’s faith.  However, under the First Amendment of the Constitution and Title VII, the government is obligated and constrained to respect and defend those rights.

In the case of Detwiler v. Mid-Columbia Medical Center, the government is no longer defending religious liberty. A court is instead deciding which beliefs are religious ‘enough’ to receive its protection. That discretion was never given to our government, and for very good reason:

A government that tells you HOW to believe is awkwardly close to a government that tells you WHAT to believe.

The Fourth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion of the Ninth Circuit on September 1st in a similar case, Wilkins-Bailey v. Essity Professional Hygiene North America LLC. When federal appellate courts arrive at opposite conclusions, the question becomes one only the Supreme Court can resolve, and until it does, the religious protection an American worker receives depends on which circuit he happens to live in.

No judge has the authority to tell a believer what his faith requires. I have asked the Supreme Court to take this case and restore the protection Congress wrote into law, so all Idahoans of faith can continue applying their convictions to the work that supports their families.

Best regards,

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