Takeaway: The defendant argued that it could not accommodate the plaintiff because this would violate state law. The court found that federal law has supremacy over state law, and thus the failure to accommodate claim could proceed.
A devout Jehovah’s Witness who challenged the oath of the Office of the California State Controller, which pledged loyalty to the California and U.S. Constitutions, could pursue a claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The California Constitution requires all public employees, except those as may be by law exempted, to swear or affirm to support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the state of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to those Constitutions. In 2016, the plaintiff began working for the California Franchise Tax Board without first signing a loyalty oath.
The next year, however, she applied to the California Office of the State Controller and was offered a higher-paying position. The Controller’s Office asked her to take California’s loyalty oath. The employee requested an accommodation to sign the oath with an addendum specifying that her allegiance was first and foremost to God and that she would not take up arms.
The Controller’s Office rejected the plaintiff’s proposed addendum to her loyalty oath. Because she refused to sign the oath in its unmodified form, the agency rescinded her job offer. The plaintiff returned to her lower-paying job at the Tax Board, which then required her to take the oath but allowed her to include an addendum like the one she had proposed to the Controller’s Office. The plaintiff later obtained positions with two other state agencies, neither of which required her to sign a loyalty oath.
The plaintiff filed an action in federal court against the Controller’s Office and the California State Controller in her official capacity, alleging that their refusal to allow her proposed addendum to the loyalty oath violated Title VII under failure to accommodate and disparate impact theories. She also asserted a failure to accommodate claim against the Controller’s Office under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). In addition, she alleged that the refusal by both defendants to accommodate her religious beliefs violated the Free Exercise Clauses of the federal and state Constitutions.
The plaintiff sought damages for the failure to accommodate, disparate impact and federal free exercise claims, but not for the California free exercise claim. For all claims, she sought a declaratory judgment that the Controller’s Office’s actions violated her rights and an injunction barring the agency from refusing similar accommodations.
The defendants moved to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motion and denied leave to amend, reasoning that the plaintiff could not plead any further facts to save any of her claims.
The plaintiff timely appealed to the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit agreed that the plaintiff lacked standing to seek prospective relief because she was no longer seeking employment at the Controller’s Office. However, it ruled that the plaintiff could try to cure this defect by amendment.
In analyzing the plaintiff’s Title VII and FEHA claims, the court considered whether the plaintiff had adequately pleaded a conflict between her job requirements and religious beliefs. The Controller’s Office argued that the loyalty oath did not require its takers to pledge loyalty to government over religion and therefore posed no conflict with the plaintiff’s religious beliefs. The 9th Circuit disagreed and found that the oath could be understood as requiring state employees to place their allegiance to the federal and state Constitutions over their allegiance to God for the purposes of their work. In fact, California’s apparent rationale for the oath requirement was to ensure that if an oath taker’s religion ever conflicted with the federal or state Constitutions, religion must yield.
The court also ruled that the plaintiff had presented a “prima face” case that the oath had a disparate impact based on religion under Title VII.
Thus, the 9th Circuit reversed the decision of the district court and ordered the case to proceed.
Bolden-Hardge v. Office of the California State Controller, 9th Cir., No. 21-15660 (April 3, 2023).
Jeffrey Rhodes is an attorney with McInroy, Rigby & Rhodes LLP in Arlington, Va.