By Professor Robert J. Romano, JD, LLM, St. John’s University, Senior Writer
On October 18, 2021, Washington State University (WSU) terminated its then head football coach, Nick Rolovich, ‘for cause.’ The reason, or cause, was because Coach Rolovich failed to comply with Governor Jay Inslee’s executive order mandating that all state employees be vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. This termination came despite Coach Rolovich’s request for a religious exemption to receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, which he sought based on his Catholic beliefs. At the time of his firing, Coach Rolovich, was the highest-paid state employee in the state of Washington, with an annual salary of approximately $3.2 million and because he was fired ‘for cause,’ he was not entitled to the balance due under the term of his contract, an amount that equated to approximately $9 million.
Being a red-blooded American, and not happy with being fired from his position as head coach and the lofty salary that goes along with it, Rolovich filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Washington, claiming that WSU had violated his rights per Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the state of Washington’s Law Against Discrimination, and that the employment contract he had with the University was breached.[1]
In ruling on WSU’s Motion for Summary Judgment, however, the District Court found that there was no genuine dispute as to any material facts within the “voluminous record” to support any of Coach Rolovich’s alleged claims.[2] The Court, in analyzing Section 703(a)(1) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which provides, in part, that “it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion . . . or national origin. . . .” determined that all Title VII claims are determined in accordance with a burden-shifting framework wherein an employee must first establish a prima facia case of failure to accommodate, and then if successful, the burden shifts to the employer to show “it was nonetheless justified in not accommodating the employee’s religious beliefs or practices.[3] An employee must establish his or her failure-to-accommodate claim by alleging the following: (1) that the employee had a bona fide religious belief, the practice of which conflicts with an employment duty; (2) that the employee informed his employer of the belief and conflict and (3) “the employer threatened him with or subjected him to discriminatory treatment, including discharge, because of his inability to fulfill the job requirements.”[4]
Once such is established, the employer, to rebut its employee’s claim, must allege as an affirmative defense “that it initiated good faith efforts to accommodate reasonably the employee’s religious practices or that it could not reasonably accommodate the employee without undue hardship.” [5] Undue hardship must be determined per the particular facts of a case and may result if there is “more than a de minimis cost to the employer . . . [or] more than a de minimis impact on coworkers.”[6]
In this case, the District Court found that the record did not support Coach Rolovich’s claim for religious exemption to the Covid-19 vaccination for two reasons. First, because he “frequently expressed secular concerns about the vaccine to friends, family members and coworkers and that in thousands of pages of discovery, he never invokes a religious reason for not wanting to be vaccinated.”[7] Second, because WSU proved that it would endure undue hardship by showing that Coach Rolovich’s request to be unvaccinated would result in increased travel costs for the athletic department, would harm both recruitment and fundraising efforts, all the while damaging the University’s reputation and increasing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 to student athletes, the coaching staff, the athletic department, the media and the public on the whole. Therefore, by proving that Coach Rolovich’s unvaccinated status would materially increase the risk of spreading COVID-19 to others, the District Court determined that WSU is entitled to summary judgment as to all claims.
Outside of the law, additionally, what did not help Coach Rolovich’s request for an exemption due to his Catholic beliefs, is that the Catholic Church had no prohibition on its members receiving the vaccine and Pope Francis, together with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated unequivocally, that all Covid-19 vaccines are morally acceptable and that Catholics have a duty, responsibility or obligation to be vaccinated.8 In the end, Coach Rolovich should have been a team player, done what was right by the University, and most importantly, done what was right by the student-athletes the University entrusted him with during the time of a global pandemic.
[1] Case 2:22-cv-00319-TOR.
[2] Case 2:22-cv-00319-TOR EFC no. 135 filed 01/06/2025.
[3] Bolden-Hardge v. Off. of California State Controller, 63 F.4th 1215, 1222 (9th Cir. 2023).
[4] Heller v. EBB Auto Co., 8 F.3d 1433, 1438 (9th Cir. 1993).
[5] Sutton v. Providence St. Joseph Med. Ctr., 192 F.3d 826, 830 (9th Cir. 1999).
[6] Id.
[7] Case 2:22-cv-00319-TOR EFC no. 135 filed 01/06/2025 at page 5.
