EXCLUSIVE: Judge rules against Seattle employees fired for religious refusal of COVID vax

King County Superior Court Judge Tanya L. Thorp has ruled in favor of the City of Seattle in a high-profile lawsuit brought by dozens of former city employees who were terminated after refusing to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Thorp ruled that none of them had sincerely held religious beliefs when they objected to the vaccine mandate. She said their beliefs are "secular cloaked in religious vernacular," and that prayer is not a reasonable manner for decision making.

In her ruling, Thorp agreed with arguments presented by the city’s outside counsel, Seyfarth Shaw LLP, granting a motion for summary judgment on most of the plaintiffs’ claims. The employees from City Light (SCL), the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), and the city's Finance/Admin department (FAS) had alleged violations of Washington’s Law Against Discrimination (WLAD), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, failure to accommodate religious beliefs and wrongful termination.

In court documents obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, the City argued that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate a bona fide religious belief that conflicted with the vaccine mandate. Thorp said that their objections were “secular concerns cloaked in religious vernacular.”

The city further argued that prayer alone does not convert a personal decision into a protected religious belief, citing federal case law that distinguishes personal or medical objections from religious practices.

Judge Thorp largely agreed, dismissing the majority of claims, including wrongful termination and discrimination. In her decision, she emphasized that the law does not require employers to accommodate personal opinions or choices “merely because they are framed in religious terms.”

Only four plaintiffs will be allowed to proceed, and solely on the limited question of whether accommodating their beliefs would have imposed an “undue hardship” on the city. All other claims in the case were dismissed.

The lawsuit stems from Seattle’s 2021 vaccine mandate for city employees, which required proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment. While the city granted religious exemptions during the mandate process, attorneys for Seattle argued that those exemptions did not automatically establish a legal conflict under WLAD or Title VII.

Adding to the controversy, one of the dismissed plaintiffs, Kristie Huffaker, previously won her union grievance and arbitration against the City of Seattle for wrongful termination related to the same vaccine mandate. The arbitrator ruled in Huffaker’s favor, awarding her reinstatement, back pay, restoration of sick and vacation leave, and recovery of lost retirement benefits.

The city challenged that award in court, but Judge Whedbee of King County Superior Court upheld the arbitration decision, forcing the city to reinstate Huffaker. Despite that ruling, the city has not fully complied with the award, and the union has threatened additional legal action to enforce it.

Critics now question how Huffaker could win her arbitration on wrongful termination grounds, yet Judge Thorp dismissed her from the group lawsuit entirely, ruling she had “no grounds for any claims.”

Judge Thorp was appointed to the King County Superior Court by Governor Jay Inslee, who imposed Washington’s statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandate that resulted in the termination of thousands of state employees. The state policy was one of the strictest in the nation during the pandemic.

The decision comes as similar cases have played out across Washington and the country, with courts frequently ruling in favor of government agencies and employers that imposed vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, another city employee, Marina Shinderuk, who pursued a separate lawsuit over the same mandate, recently settled with the City of Seattle for close to $1 million. Unlike the group lawsuit, Shinderuk’s case was handled internally by the City Attorney’s Office rather than outside counsel.

In June, a bombshell investigative report exposed what former Seattle Fire Department Deputy Chief Tom Walsh and others described as a rigged COVID-19 vaccine mandate process, with top officials allegedly declaring that no religious accommodations would be granted and fire leadership brushing off warnings about widespread use of fake vaccination cards among city employees.

At the center of the controversy is an October 13, 2021, meeting of Seattle department heads in which Adrienne Thompson, then a senior advisor to Mayor Jenny Durkan, reportedly told department leaders that the city had no intention of approving religious accommodations, despite a public process that suggested otherwise. According to documents obtained by Hoffman, an internal email from Assistant Chief Chris Lombard, cited in Walsh’s whistleblower declaration, documented the exchange.

Lombard wrote that Thompson, when pressed for clarity, replied, “After talking to the attorneys, we are not comfortable providing such a statement,” but made it clear verbally that the City’s position was to deny all accommodation requests unless employees could fully isolate themselves from others—a virtually impossible standard for most jobs.

Lombard’s email noted the discussion “for the sake of a paper trail” and was later used as key evidence in lawsuits against the city, including Collins v. Seattle and the ongoing federal case Vale v. Seattle. In text messages, Walsh and Lombard referred to the email as a legal “torpedo” against the city’s defense.

Walsh’s 2022 sworn declaration called the city’s accommodation process “a sham,” alleging that leadership had predetermined the outcome long before any employee applications were submitted. Workers who sought religious exemptions said they were misled into believing their requests would be fairly reviewed.

“Unless a department/city employee could ensure they would 100% avoid contact with all other city employees, the public, and any city facility, they would not be able to receive an accommodation,” Thompson allegedly stated, according to Lombard’s notes.

During a deposition in Marina Shinderuk’s case, Thompson admitted that the ultimate decision not to accommodate employees came from Mayor Durkan and that individual department heads were tasked with carrying out those orders. Despite this internal directive, the city never publicly disclosed that it had adopted a blanket denial policy, raising questions about potential civil rights violations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Thompson was on the list of witnesses to depose before Thorp’s ruling.

Additionally, according to a 10/1/21 email obtained by Hoffman from SPU manager Spruce Metzger, even though employees' "exemption requests have been granted are under the assumption that they will be able to mask up, and test and be able to continue working as they have been for the past 18 months," he continued, "that is not going to be the case."

He noted in the email, "The bottom line is that if an employee is in a City facility, or interacts (indoors or outdoors) with other employees or the public, whether that interaction is frequent or infrequent, we cannot accommodate them not being vaccinated."

An email obtained by Hoffman from Debra Smith, who was the CEO of Seattle City Light at the time, lamented to Thompson that her staff was reacting badly to being denied the accommodations despite their religious exemptions being granted.

She wrote, "At the end of the day, all I have is my integrity and reputation. I’m not sure how much farther I’m willing to go and the extent to which I’m willing to have my character called into question over decisions I did not personally make," seeming to put the blame back on Thompson and Durkan for the decision.