Supreme Court Denies Firefighters' COVID-19 Vaccine Appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision from September 2025 holding that a Snohomish County fire agency acted lawfully during the height of the pandemic in denying accommodations to unvaccinated firefighters that would have allowed them to provide healthcare in their paramedic/EMT roles and to live communally with other firefighters.
“The agency carefully evaluated its options and potential risks in the context of a regional fire and rescue agency managing a complex and once-in-a-century pandemic and relied on objective, medical evidence that showed that it would have faced significant health and safety costs, which would have affected the agency’s own workforce and persons in the public needing emergency, even life-saving, services, as well as other operational costs,” Shannon Phillips said, who represents Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue, along with Molly Gibbons of Summit Law Group PLLC.
In 2021, eight Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue firefighters, as well as 30+ others, refused Washington’s 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare providers, citing religious reasons, and were consequently placed on leave until COVID-19 conditions improved. When the firefighters sued the agency in 2022, the fire agency defended its decision, saying it couldn’t accommodate the firefighters largely due to the health threat and safety costs of having unvaccinated responders in close contact with vulnerable patients while providing emergency medical response. The self-nicknamed “Snohomish Eight” claimed that their employer was in violation of federal and state employment discrimination laws requiring accommodation of religious beliefs by not permitting them to continue in their healthcare roles while unvaccinated.
Subsequently, both the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue, agreeing that permitting unvaccinated firefighters to continue providing patient care would have imposed significant costs by increasing the risk of COVID transmission, as well as the risk of serious illness and death, to vulnerable patients and other firefighters. The courts further recognized that with 25% of the agency’s firefighter workforce requesting accommodation, “there can be no doubt that granting that many exemptions would have hamstrung SRFR’s operations.”
“As of January 16, 2025, over 1.2 million people in the U.S. had died due to COVID. As the courts have recognized, SRFR’s conclusion that COVID vaccination was the best means by which it could slow the spread of COVID, prevent serious illness or death, and maintain its ability to provide critical services to the community aligned with available expert guidance from public health authorities like the CDC, Washington State Department of Health, and other local health departments,” Molly Gibbons said.
The Snohomish Eight then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, petitioning the high court to review its landmark, unanimous 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy, which required employers to demonstrate that rejecting religious employees’ accommodation requests would impose a substantial burden on operations. The coalition claimed review was necessary for the court to determine whether a “good-faith but mistaken fears of such hardships suffice” for an employer to reject a proposed accommodation.
“The denial of the petition allows employers to continue to rely on the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, which recognized that an employer facing workplace health risks may rely on current, objective guidance from public health authorities in making decisions about how best to protect the people they serve and employees,” Shannon Phillips said.
