He served 19 vulnerable families. His alternative was masks and weekly testing
A child welfare worker who chose resignation over a COVID-19 jab has lost his religious discrimination appeal.
The worker served 19 families for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. His days involved home visits, supervised parenting time, transporting a child with significant medical issues to Boston Children’s Hospital, and weekly emergency on-call shifts. The job, the court noted, was “not compatible with working exclusively from home.”
When Governor Charles D. Baker’s Executive Order No. 595 required all state employees to get vaccinated in August 2021, the worker sought a religious exemption. His proposal: masks in every setting, weekly testing, and more remote work.
The department denied it, finding his alternatives offered comparatively weak protection for the vulnerable populations he served. Faced with the needle or the door, he resigned in October 2021.
He sued under G. L. c. 151B, s 4 (1A), Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination statute. His argument was blunt: the vaccine does not actually prevent infection or transmission, so exempting him would cause no hardship.
The department brought receipts. Affidavits from five officials - including the medical director of the state’s bureau of infectious disease and laboratory sciences, board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases - laid out the health risks and the inadequacy of non-pharmaceutical alternatives.
The worker filed no expert evidence in response.
The Superior Court granted summary judgment for the department, accepting his beliefs as sincerely held but finding the exemption would have imposed an undue hardship - the statutory threshold where an employer can lawfully decline a religious accommodation. He also tried to strike the medical expert’s affidavit as unqualified. That failed too.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed on October 15, 2026. The expert’s credentials gave the trial judge “a more than adequate basis” to accept the testimony. Objections that the expert relied on outside studies rather than original research went to the evidence’s weight, not its admissibility.
On the discrimination claim, the arithmetic was straightforward. The worker’s role put him in close quarters with medically vulnerable children, families, and coworkers. The department was already short-staffed. An outbreak could have gutted its capacity to deliver services, especially in emergencies. And the worker never disputed any of that - his entire case hinged on vaccine ineffectiveness, a claim he offered no evidence to support.
For HR professionals weighing religious accommodation requests tied to health mandates, the playbook is clear: anchor the denial to specific operational risks, back it with qualified expert evidence, and show why the proposed alternatives fall short.
