Your accommodation queue could be discrimination – even if no one gets denied
A federal court has found that a religious discrimination lawsuit over how accommodation requests were handled – not whether they were denied – can proceed to trial.
On February 25, 2026, a Washington, D.C. federal court allowed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy to move forward – and the central issue was not whether an accommodation was denied, but how the request was handled in the first place.
The case began in the thick of the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Marc Desmarais, a supervisor at the Department of Energy's Western Area Power Administration, submitted a religious accommodation request shortly after President Biden's Executive Order 14043 required all federal employees to get vaccinated in September 2021. Desmarais, a Christian whose faith is Catholic-based, alleged that getting vaccinated would violate his sincerely held religious beliefs, citing convictions about bodily integrity and moral objections to the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccine development.
What happened next is what landed the agency in court.
According to the complaint, the Department of Energy told Desmarais in December 2021 that his request would be processed in a specific order – one that, in practice, meant religious accommodation requests were being set aside entirely while medical requests were handled first. The agency allegedly gave no timeline for when, or even whether, it would get around to religious requests at all.
A federal injunction paused the vaccine mandate in January 2022, and Desmarais was no longer required to get the shot. President Biden eventually revoked the executive order in May 2023. Desmarais filed suit that same month.
By the time the case reached its most recent hearing, most of Desmarais's claims had already been narrowed. The one that survived – and the one the court was asked to throw out – was his claim that the agency's accommodation process itself was discriminatory. The Department of Energy argued that Desmarais had not sufficiently alleged any harm from the deprioritization of his request, contending that waiting for an adjudication did not amount to a real injury.
The court disagreed. Under the standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2024 ruling, employees do not need to show a significant or serious injury to pursue a discrimination claim. They only need to show some harm to the terms or conditions of their employment. The court found that being subjected to a policy that treated religious requests as a lower priority – leaving Desmarais in uncertainty for months while colleagues with medical requests moved through the process – was itself a harmful working condition.
The case now moves to its next stage. The Department of Energy has not yet had the opportunity to present its defense on the merits, and all of Desmarais's allegations remain unproven.
Still, the court's reasoning offers a clear signal for anyone who oversees accommodation processes in the workplace. The ruling makes plain that how requests are managed matters as much as the final decision. A system that processes some accommodation requests promptly while leaving others in an undefined queue – even without an outright denial – can expose an organization to discrimination liability.
For HR professionals, the lesson is direct. Religious accommodation requests need to be handled with the same urgency and consistency as any other type of request. A two-tiered process, even one that is informal or temporary, is not without legal risk. The uncertainty created by an unequal process, the court suggested, is a harm in itself.
