PJI Settles Religious Discrimination Case Against Oregon Dept. of Corrections

SALEM, Ore. - Capping a two-year battle, the Pacific Justice Institute ("PJI") has obtained a six-figure settlement in a religious discrimination case involving a former state correctional officer who lost his job for not receiving a COVID vaccine.

PJI represented Michael Miller, a Christian who worked for the Oregon Department of Corrections ("ODOC") as a Corrections Officer - Outside Patrol at Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern Oregon for nine years before being fired in February 2022. Miller's work shifts typically involved circling Snake River's perimeter in an ODOC-provided patrol car, in solitude, looking for potential escapees. Any contact Miller had with fellow employees or adults in custody inside Snake River's facilities during his shifts was minimal and extremely brief.

In August 2021, Oregon's then-governor, Kate Brown, issued an executive order requiring state employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The order did, however, allow ODOC to grant exceptions to employees unable to receive COVID vaccines for religious or medical reasons, provided the employees submitted their exception requests to ODOC by October 18, 2021.

Like many Christians, Miller religiously opposed COVID vaccines due to their manufacturers' use of cells from aborted babies in the development of the vaccines. Even so, he initially sought only a medical exception, as he had natural immunity after contracting COVID in November 2020. ODOC initially granted his request, albeit temporarily.

After ODOC revoked his medical exception in November 2021, Miller sought a religious exception, which ODOC denied on the basis that he did not submit it by the October deadline. When Miller did not begin the COVID vaccination process, ODOC put him on unpaid leave in early December 2021, then fired him after a hearing in February 2022. Just one day after his firing, ODOC announced that Oregon's vaccine mandate would no longer be in effect as of April 1, raising the specter that ODOC fired Miller despite knowing the mandate would soon be lifted.

Oregon's Bureau of Labor & Industries ("BOLI"), which investigates employment discrimination claims, later determined that ODOC could have accommodated Miller's exception request without undue hardship despite its late submission and discriminated against Miller in not doing so. Despite BOLI's determination, ODOC fought Miller tooth and nail after PJI filed suit under Title VII - the federal law prohibiting employers from discriminating on the basis of religion - in Oregon's federal district court in December 2023.

ODOC, in fact, asked the court to dispose of the lawsuit twice.

"Title VII requires employers' otherwise neutral rules to give way to their employees' need for religious accommodations, even during pandemics," said Ray D. Hacke, PJI's Oregon-based staff attorney. "Even arguably neutral deadlines must yield to the need for accommodations unless an employer would incur undue hardship.

"There was no undue hardship here: ODOC would not have incurred substantial additional costs rising to an excessive or unjustifiable level - or any costs at all, for that matter - had it simply replaced Michael Miller's medical exception with a religious one, especially since he worked overwhelmingly in isolation and wasn't a danger to co-workers or inmates at Snake River. Instead, ODOC took the harshest possible route in firing him, thereby violating his legally and constitutionally protected religious freedoms."

A trial in Miller's case had been scheduled for late February 2026. Now that he has accepted $135,000 in exchange for dismissing his claim, a trial is no longer necessary.

"Legal and constitutional protections for religious freedoms do not disappear during a pandemic," PJI President Brad Dacus said. "Government entities, of all employers, should know that and need to be held accountable for unnecessarily trampling on religious freedom in the name of public safety. While I'm confident that we would have won at trial, I'm glad PJI was able to obtain justice for Michael Miller without the need for one."