Appeals Court Rejects DCF Social Worker’s Religious Exemption Claim Over COVID Vaccine Mandate: Jangl v. Secretary of EOHHS (AC 25-P-168, October 15, 2026)

Timothy Jangl was a social worker for the Department of Children and Families in the fall of 2021. His job required regular face-to-face contact with children, families, coworkers, court personnel, and others. He served nineteen families, visiting children and parents in their homes, accompanying children to appointments, supervising parenting time, and attending court hearings. One child on his caseload had significant medical issues; Jangl sometimes transported that child from western Massachusetts to Boston Children’s Hospital. One day each week, he acted as duty worker for his unit, conducting emergency home visits and assisting in the removal of children from their homes as needed. The work was not compatible with exclusive remote employment.

In August 2021, after having ceased most in-person functions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the department began transitioning back to normal operations, requiring workers to be in the office at least two days per week. Around the same time, Governor Charles D. Baker issued Executive Order No. 595, requiring all executive department employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of continued employment. The order also required the human resources division to establish a procedure to allow limited exemptions for employees unwilling to receive the vaccine due to a sincerely held religious belief, where a reasonable accommodation could be reached.

Jangl sought a religious exemption. He requested that the department reduce his mandated office time and permit him to continue working remotely, arguing that he had performed his duties satisfactorily with minimal office time over the past year and a half. He also proposed wearing a mask in all job-related environments and undergoing weekly COVID-19 testing. The department and EOHHS officials reviewed his request and denied it, concluding that his duties and the comparatively weak protection offered by his proposed alternatives meant his religious beliefs could not be accommodated without undue hardship. In October 2021, faced with the choice between vaccination and termination, Jangl resigned.

The Litigation

After exhausting his administrative remedies, Jangl filed a complaint in Superior Court, alleging religious discrimination under G.L. c. 151B, § 4. He argued that vaccination does not actually protect against COVID-19, and therefore accommodating his religious observance would not have imposed undue hardship on the defendants.

The defendants moved for summary judgment. They attached a statement of undisputed material facts and several affidavits, including one from Dr. Lawrence Madoff, the medical director of the bureau of infectious disease and laboratory sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In his affidavit, Dr. Madoff attested to the dangers of COVID-19 and the safety and effectiveness of vaccination against the disease.

Jangl opposed summary judgment and moved to strike Dr. Madoff’s affidavit, arguing that Dr. Madoff was unqualified to testify to the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Jangl complained that Dr. Madoff had not himself conducted any research regarding the vaccines and that his opinion relied entirely on studies, some of which failed to reflect the most recent figures on COVID-19 vaccination and infection. Jangl offered no supporting declarations or expert evidence to refute Dr. Madoff’s opinion, and he did not request a hearing to challenge the reliability of the underlying methodology.

Judge Rosemary Connolly granted summary judgment for the defendants. She accepted Jangl’s religious beliefs as true and sincerely held, but concluded that allowing the requested vaccine exemption would have imposed undue hardship on the department. In the same memorandum, she denied Jangl’s motion to strike, finding that Dr. Madoff had set out his qualifications and a sufficient basis for his opinions.

The Expert Challenge

On appeal, Jangl first argued that the judge should have allowed his motion to strike Dr. Madoff’s affidavit. The Appeals Court disagreed. Dr. Madoff averred in his affidavit that he was board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the medical director of the bureau that administered the Massachusetts COVID-19 vaccine program. As medical director, he provided consultation, supervision, and guidance in disease recognition, investigation, and control. Given this extensive experience and familiarity with the Commonwealth’s vaccination efforts, the judge had more than adequate basis to determine Dr. Madoff was qualified as an expert.

The court rejected Jangl’s challenges to the content of the affidavit. To the extent Jangl argued that the methodology underlying Dr. Madoff’s opinion was unreliable, the court held that issue was waived because Jangl never requested a Daubert-Lanigan hearing. There is no substitute for an express motion requesting such a hearing, the court explained, and Jangl made no such motion.

The plaintiff’s other concerns went to weight, not admissibility. Dr. Madoff was permitted to base his testimony on scientific studies; an expert’s opinion may be based wholly on such sources, so long as the facts or data are independently admissible and are of the sort that experts in that specialty rely on. The court has never required that such sources be the product of the testifying expert’s own research. Even if Dr. Madoff’s affidavit relied on outdated studies, that argument goes to weight and would not render him unqualified or his testimony inadmissible. Similarly, his treatment of (or failure to address) contrary evidence is irrelevant to his qualification to testify, and that he may not have addressed every potential aspect of the case affects probativeness, rather than admissibility.

The Undue Hardship Defense

Turning to the merits, the court noted that under G.L. c. 151B, § 4 (1A), employers must accommodate an employee’s religious practice unless the employer can prove such accommodation would cause undue hardship in the conduct of the employer’s business. Where an employee makes out a prima facie case of religious discrimination (as the judge concluded Jangl had), the burden shifts to the employer to prove undue hardship. The statute contains a nonexhaustive list of circumstances that render accommodation an undue hardship, including an undue compromise of the health and safety of the public.

The court held that the defendants met their burden. Jangl’s responsibilities involved close, in-person interaction with families and children, including children with health vulnerabilities. He was regularly required to be on call to respond to emergencies. COVID-19 infection could have compromised not only his own performance of these essential duties but also, given the rapid spread of COVID-19 in close quarters and among vulnerable populations, could have triggered an outbreak among the department’s staff and the families and children it serves. This would have constituted a widespread and potentially dire threat to public health and safety. The department was already experiencing significant staffing shortages at the time Jangl submitted his request, so such an outbreak could have severely threatened the department’s capacity to provide necessary social services, particularly in emergency situations.

Jangl’s response failed to address the defendants’ undue burden argument squarely. Below and on appeal, he did not dispute the description of his job duties or the consequences that COVID-19 exposure might create for the children, families, and coworkers with whom he engaged daily. Instead, he maintained that the defendants’ undue hardship defense failed because it rested on the premise that COVID-19 vaccines protect against infection and transmission, something he believed to be in dispute.

The Fatal Gap in the Record

To support their motion, the defendants submitted affidavits from Dr. Madoff, three EOHHS officials, and the director of the department’s area office where Jangl worked, averring to the health and safety risks posed by unvaccinated individuals, the importance of vaccination to protect the public’s uninterrupted access to critical services, and the inadequacy of nonpharmaceutical interventions. Jangl, however, failed to offer any evidence in rebuttal. That failure entitled the defendants to summary judgment on his claim.

The court distinguished this case from Jeune v. UMass Memorial Health Care Sys., 106 Mass. App. Ct. 95, 103 (2025), where the employer hospital failed to provide a declaration from a medical expert regarding risks and efficacy of requested accommodations. Here, by contrast, the defendants provided extensive expert testimony, and Jangl offered nothing to create a genuine issue of material fact.

Alignment with Federal Precedent

The court noted that its conclusion aligned with the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s treatment of the issue in similar cases. In Melino v. Boston Med. Ctr., 127 F.4th 391, 397-398 (1st Cir. 2025), the First Circuit held that exempting a plaintiff from a vaccination requirement would impose undue hardship. In Rodrique v. Hearst Communications, Inc., 126 F.4th 85, 94 (1st Cir. 2025), the First Circuit found no genuine dispute of material fact related to an employer’s undue hardship defense where the employee’s sole argument was that the employer had not presented competent evidence that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit COVID-19.

The Appeals Court acknowledged that it is not bound to follow Federal court reasoning in construing G.L. c. 151B, and Jangl suggested the court take this opportunity to rethink the Federal approach. The court declined. It noted that the Supreme Judicial Court has instructed courts to carefully balance litigants’ constitutional rights against the serious dangers of transmitting COVID-19. In Vazquez Diaz v. Commonwealth, 487 Mass. 336, 350 (2021), the SJC stated that protecting public health during the pandemic constitutes an important public policy. Here, where Jangl provided no persuasive reason to depart from Federal interpretations of Title VII and Massachusetts law, and where such a departure could threaten the health and wellbeing of especially vulnerable community members, the court declined to do so.

What Practitioners Should Know

This decision reinforces several important points for employment discrimination cases. First, parties opposing summary judgment cannot rest on their pleadings and mere assertions of disputed facts. They must adduce competent evidence sufficient to show a genuine issue for trial. Merely responding “disputed” to a proposed statement of fact does not establish a genuine dispute. Second, challenges to expert methodology must be raised through a Daubert-Lanigan motion requesting a hearing; failure to do so waives the issue on appeal. Third, in religious accommodation cases involving public health, employers can meet their undue hardship burden by showing that the requested accommodation would compromise health and safety, particularly where the employee works with vulnerable populations and the employer faces staffing shortages.

By the time Jangl filed his request in August 2021, COVID-19 had claimed over 17,000 lives in Massachusetts. The court’s decision reflects the legal system’s recognition that protecting public health during a pandemic may, in some circumstances, outweigh an individual’s request for religious accommodation, particularly where the individual offers no evidence to rebut the employer’s showing of undue hardship.

Read the full opinion: Jangl v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (AC-25-P-168, October 15, 2026).