A 2026 Supreme Court test decided whether these workers could sue at all
Fired for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine, 22 former University of Washington (UW) workers can't sue the school for constitutional violations, an appeals court ruled.
The Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled on August 13, 2026, affirming a lower court and closing one route the former staff had tried against their old employer.
The dispute goes back to the pandemic. On August 20, 2021, then-Governor Jay Inslee issued a proclamation requiring healthcare providers, education workers, and state employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 18, 2021. Staff could apply for a medical or religious exemption, and exempt workers were entitled to reasonable accommodation - unless that accommodation created undue hardship for the employer.
UW, a public university that runs hospitals and clinics, was covered by the mandate and adopted its own vaccination policy. The 22 workers applied for and received religious and medical exemptions. Even so, UW concluded that keeping them in their roles would impose undue hardship, and it denied many of the requests. None received the vaccine. None could be reassigned or moved to remote work. All were let go.
The former employees sued under Section 1983 - a federal law that lets people take state actors to court for violating their constitutional rights. They claimed UW had breached their First and Fourteenth Amendment protections.
The case then narrowed to one decisive question. Section 1983 only permits suits against a "person." States, and any entity that qualifies as an "arm of the state," fall outside that word - so they can't be sued under the statute at all. Everything hinged on whether UW counted as an arm of Washington State.
The court held that it did. Judges weighed how state law structures the university, whether the state must cover its debts, and how much control the state keeps over it. Structure carried the most weight: Washington built UW as a state institution rather than a standalone corporation, and treats it as a state agency for public records, open meetings, and immunity.
The panel used a three-factor test recently reworked by a 2026 Supreme Court ruling, which shifted how much each factor counts. Run through that reweighted test, UW qualified as an arm of the state.
For HR leaders at public universities and state agencies, the point is narrow but useful: the institution itself is shielded from Section 1983 constitutional claims. The court did not decide whether the accommodation denials or the firings were lawful - only that this claim against UW could not proceed.
