PJI Takes on Oregon Again to Defend Christian Healthcare Worker Denied Benefits

SALEM, OR. – Pacific Justice Institute is headed back to the Oregon Court of Appeals for Round 2 in its fight for a Christian healthcare worker who was denied unemployment benefits on multiple occasions after declining to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

PJI represents Alison K. Lavelle-Hayden, a respiratory therapist who formerly worked at Legacy Health’s Good Samaritan Hospital (Legacy) in Portland. A practicing Seventh-day Adventist, Lavelle-Hayden holds a religious objection to receiving COVID-19 vaccines due to their connection to abortion.

After Legacy denied Lavelle-Hayden’s request for a religious exception from Oregon’s requirement that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic – something both Title VII and Oregon law allowed – and subsequently fired her for not receiving the vaccine, Lavelle-Hayden applied for unemployment benefits. For various reasons, both Oregon’s Office of Administrative Hearings and the state’s Employment Appeals Board (EAB) denied Lavelle-Hayden benefits, citing misconduct on her part.

Oregon’s Court of Appeals overturned the EAB’s first ruling in 2023, finding that the EAB’s decision was not supported by substantial evidence and remanding the case to the EAB for further consideration. After re-examining the evidence, the EAB found new reasons to deny Lavelle-Hayden unemployment benefits. Specifically, the EAB held that Lavelle-Hayden’s beliefs were not religious in nature – despite both compelling evidence to the contrary and Supreme Court rulings overwhelmingly supporting her position.

PJI’s Oregon-based staff attorney, Ray D. Hacke, has petitioned the Court of Appeals a second time and is asking the court to reverse the EAB’s decision again, this time without remand. Oral arguments are scheduled to take place in Lavelle-Hayden’s case on Monday, November 18, at 9 a.m. via videoconference.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unequivocally on multiple occasions that state employment benefit agencies, such as the EAB, cannot punish workers who lose their jobs for adhering to sincerely held religious beliefs by denying them benefits,” Hacke said. “The COVID-19 pandemic did not change that.”

“The EAB has tried to get around this by pointing to evidence in the record indicating that Ms. Lavelle-Hayden’s beliefs aren’t truly religious, while ignoring overwhelming evidence that her beliefs are, in fact, rooted in religion, which is all that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment requires. Because Ms. Lavelle-Hayden has easily met her minimal burden on that point, we appealed.”

Lavelle-Hayden’s case has implications for healthcare workers nationwide who lost their jobs for not receiving COVID-19 vaccines on religious grounds and have had trouble obtaining unemployment benefits as a result.

“There is no place in government for hostility toward religious beliefs – none,” PJI President Brad Dacus said. “The EAB’s repeated denials of unemployment benefits to Alison Lavelle-Hayden show overwhelming anti-religious bias. As defenders of religious freedom, we at PJI cannot allow the EAB’s unconstitutional actions to stand. We thus pray that the Oregon Court of Appeals gets it right a second time and awards Ms. Lavelle-Hayden the unemployment benefits to which she is constitutionally entitled.”