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 then requested that the hospital allow her either to submit to saliva testing for the virus or to work remotely full-time; these requested accommodations were denied to her and her employment was terminated when she refused the previous accommodations that had been offered.

Detwiler sued the hospital for religious discrimination under Title VII and Oregon’s parallel anti discrimination statute. The district court granted the hospital’s FRCP 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss on the ground that Detwiler’s “specific determination of what is harmful… was not, in this case, premised on the Bible or any other religious tenet or teaching, but rather on her research-based scientific medical judgments.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding that “Detwiler, by asserting a general religious principle and linking that principle to her personal, medical judgment via prayer alone, did not state a claim for religious accommodation.” See also Curtis v. Inslee, 154 F.4th 678 (9th Cir. 2025) (affirming dismissal of claims brought by former at-will employees of a nonprofit healthcare system arising from Washington governor’s proclamation requiring such workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19).