In Cherry v. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, (9th Cir., Aug. 21, 2026), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Department of Fish and Wildlife did not make adequate efforts in 2021 to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious objections to complying with the state’s Covid vaccine mandate as required by Title VII. The court said in part:
The Department merely invited the Employees to participate in a “reassignment process” with the caveat that “opportunities may be limited,” which the Employees—perhaps understandably—did not complete. Title VII requires that the Department take the initial step of proposing a reasonable accommodation that would then trigger any concomitant duty on the employee’s part to cooperate. We disagree with the district court’s conclusion that offering this reassignment process was, as a matter of law, an offer of a reasonable accommodation….
Efforts “to engage in the interactive process” is not the test; rather, the test is for the “employer to prove that it made good faith efforts to accommodate [the] employee’s religious belief.”… [W]hether the process here constituted a reasonable accommodation is best left to a jury. We cannot say that offering this reassignment process constituted offering an accommodation as a matter of law….
Our conclusion is reinforced all the more by the Department’s failure to offer any material facts suggesting that its “reassignment process” would likely yield a reasonable accommodation. And the bare-bones facts that the Department does offer do little to assure us of such a prospect. The State’s data about its “reassignment process” show just a 14 percent chance of placement into some job….
The scheme that Title VII sets forth is straightforward. The Department has a choice. Either it proposes a reasonable accommodation … or it must prove that a reasonable accommodation would produce an undue hardship on the conduct of the Department’s business….