EXCLUSIVE: Former Washington AG employees ask Ninth Circuit to revive religious discrimination suit over COVID vaccine mandate

In an Opening Brief filed with the court obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, the women, a former paralegal, tort investigator, or legal assistant with a combined 80 years of service, contend that their firings violated the Free Exercise Clause, Due Process Clause, and state anti-discrimination laws. They also maintain that former Attorney General Bob Ferguson, now governor, exceeded his legal authority by imposing a mandate that the Governor never required.

At the center of the employees’ appeal is that former Governor Jay Inslee’s 2021 statewide vaccine mandate specifically excluded the Attorney General’s Office and its staff. The brief emphasizes that despite this exclusion, the AGO created its own internal vaccination requirement, making COVID-19 vaccination a “qualification for fitness of duty.” According to the employees, this policy was far beyond the Governor’s order, applying not just to staff, but also volunteers and even office visitors.

The former employees argue that this unilateral action was legally impermissible. The Attorney General’s statutory authority, they say, does not include imposing medical mandates, regulating health conditions of employment, or declaring emergency health requirements, powers reserved to the Governor under Washington law. Because the AGO lacked such authority, they contend the policy was void from the outset.

The exclusion of AGO employees from the Governor’s mandate, they argue, also means the office had no public health justification for imposing a stricter requirement than the Governor himself deemed necessary. Each of the ten women applied for a religious exemption. Their brief states that even when the AGO recognized the sincerity of these beliefs, it still denied every religious accommodation request.

Some employees describe interviews in which they were questioned about unrelated personal matters, such as their shopping habits, past medications, or medical history, lines of inquiry they say were irrelevant and inappropriate.

Internal records obtained by the plaintiffs show that employees who sought medical exemptions were treated more favorably. Those requesting exemptions for health reasons reportedly received individualized review and, in many cases, were allowed to continue teleworking, modify schedules, undergo testing, or adjust job duties. The brief argues that these very same options, extended to medical exemption recipients, were denied to religious applicants.

According to the plaintiffs, the AGO had already demonstrated the success of widespread remote work during the pandemic. For 18 months, the office had operated remotely with no reduction in productivity; several of the plaintiffs even earned performance awards while working from home. Yet the AGO refused to continue telework as a religious accommodation, even for employees who had performed their jobs remotely for years.

Beyond alleged religious discrimination, the Plaintiffs argue that the procedure used to evaluate and then deny their accommodation requests violated fundamental principles of due process.

According to the appeal, the AGO relied on an internal “Exemption Accommodation Tool,” a decision-making rubric the employees were never told existed. This tool, the brief claims, was used to generate nearly identical denial letters citing unspecified “undue hardship,” but without describing what hardship each individual supposedly caused.

The employees argue that the process deprived them of the ability to understand, challenge, or respond to the grounds for their termination. They also point to internal communications suggesting that officials were instructed to construe religious exemptions “as narrow as possible,” a phrase they argue demonstrates predetermined outcomes rather than genuine, individualized evaluation.

Appeals of their denials, they say, were perfunctory, handled by senior officials who had already helped shape or enforce the mandate.

The plaintiffs maintain that these procedural defects run afoul of the Supreme Court’s long-established rule that public employees are entitled to notice of the reasons for termination and a meaningful opportunity to respond before losing their jobs.

When the case was dismissed in district court, the judge ruled that the individual defendants were protected from liability under the doctrine of qualified immunity. That doctrine shields public officials from being sued unless they violate “clearly established” rights.

The plaintiffs argue on appeal that the district court mischaracterized their claims by framing them as a challenge to pandemic public-health policy generally, rather than as a challenge to religious discrimination and denial of due process, areas where the law is firmly established. The former employees contend that rights to religious neutrality and fair pre-termination procedures have been clear for decades and should have been known to senior legal officials in the state’s largest law firm. They also argue that qualified immunity cannot apply when officials act outside their statutory authority, as they claim occurred here.

The brief added that deciding qualified immunity at the pleading stage was premature, because whether religious claimants were treated worse than medical claimants is a fact-intensive question that requires discovery.

In asking the Ninth Circuit to reverse the dismissal, the plaintiffs argue that the lower court failed to allow them to amend their complaint, even though federal courts are generally instructed to grant amendments freely. They say that any pleading defects could have been easily corrected, particularly given the complexity of the constitutional and employment issues at stake.

They also argue that the district court wrongly declined to hear their state-law discrimination and wrongful-termination claims, since those claims arise from the same events as their federal claims and would ordinarily remain in federal court.

If the Ninth Circuit reinstates the lawsuit, the case would proceed to discovery, allowing the Plaintiffs to obtain internal emails, policy drafts, and records that they believe will substantiate their allegations.

The State of Washington’s brief responding to the appeal is due in January 2026.

Their attorneys, Jennifer W. Kennedy of Sierra Madre, California, and Robert A. Bouvatte of Tumwater, Washington, said in a release, “[These] Plaintiffs have legitimate claims for violation of their constitutional rights. These are fundamental, clearly established rights, of which Washington’s largest law firm and its most powerful attorney were clearly well aware.”