The United Airlines vaccine lawsuit stemming from the carrier’s pandemic-era workforce mandate has reached the steps of the US Supreme Court, with the airline filing a petition on 7 August challenging the class-action status granted to nearly 1,000 former customer-facing employees who were placed on unpaid leave after receiving religious exemptions.
The case centres on whether those employees, each of whom lost income when United enforced its vaccination policy in late 2021, can pursue their religious-discrimination claims as a single group, or whether the individual circumstances of each worker make a class action legally inappropriate. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear the matter.
How United Airlines’ vaccine mandate created the dispute
United Airlines became the first domestic carrier to require its entire US workforce to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, a policy announced in August 2021. Employees could request an exemption on religious or medical grounds. To request a medical accommodation, according to the Justia Fifth Circuit case record, employees were required to submit medical documentation demonstrating a clinical need for the exemption.
Comments made by CEO Scott Kirby during an internal pilots’ town hall that same month drew scrutiny. Kirby said ‘very few people’ would clear the exemption process, given what he described as strict rules. ‘By the way, there are going to be very few people who get through the medical and religious exemption. There’s some pretty strict rules about that. So, I would encourage any pilot that’s decided they all of a sudden, or any employee, that’s all of a sudden decided I’m really religious, and I’m gonna say I’m gonna… you’re putting your job on the line. You better be very careful about that, about doing that,’ Kirby said in a video of the meeting obtained by Fox News.
In practice, the airline processed a substantial volume of requests. United granted 4,070 accommodation requests out of 5,885 submitted, equivalent to roughly 75% approval, according to the Supreme Court petition document. However, an approved exemption did not allow customer-facing staff to remain in their existing roles.
United had initially intended to place all exempt employees on unpaid leave. The airline later revised the policy for non-customer-facing workers such as mechanics and baggage handlers, who could stay on the job provided they complied with masking and COVID testing requirements. Customer-facing staff, however, were placed on unpaid leave from November 2021. While they could apply for available non-customer-facing positions internally, employees argued the arrangement effectively forced them to choose between their religious convictions and their income.
The Fifth Circuit ruling and the United Airlines vaccine lawsuit class certification
The lawsuit was filed in September 2021, with a group of United employees alleging the carrier had failed to offer reasonable religious and medical accommodations. The plaintiffs sought to represent several affected groups, but the federal district court certified a narrower class: roughly 1,000 employees who were deemed customer-facing, had received an accommodation based on a sincerely held religious belief, and were subsequently placed on unpaid leave.
United contested the class certification, arguing that the individual circumstances of each claimant made collective proceedings unsuitable. In March 2026, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, upholding the class on the basis that the carrier had treated all affected workers the same way. ‘United did not accommodate its employees by giving them different jobs, it accommodated them by placing them on unpaid leave and giving them the opportunity to apply for other jobs. … Every member was placed on unpaid leave, meaning they lost their income and were prohibited from working. While some members may have felt the loss of income more than others, United accommodated all members the same way,’ the Fifth Circuit stated.
The court acknowledged that the financial impact varied between individuals but concluded that the uniformity of treatment was sufficient to sustain the class.
What United is asking the Supreme Court to decide
United Airlines is now asking the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling. In its petition, the carrier argues that the case raises questions so specific to each individual, including whether a given employee’s religious objection was genuine, whether applying for a different role would have constituted a reasonable accommodation, and what income or compensation each person actually lost, that the class cannot coherently function as a single legal unit.
United warns that proceeding on a class basis would in effect generate hundreds of separate fact-finding exercises within one lawsuit. ‘This petition asks whether a court may instead use certification to greenlight hundreds of mini-trials, by certifying a class now and leaving the work of adjudicating indisputably individualized evidence for later. … If left undisturbed, the decision below will destabilize class actions across the nation, from employment to mass torts to securities,’ the petition states.
The airline also contends the ruling could lower the threshold for class certification in other sectors, with implications well beyond aviation employment disputes. If the Supreme Court declines to take the case, the approximately 1,000 employees will remain certified as a class and the litigation will proceed in the lower courts. TheTravel contacted United for comment and did not receive a response before publication.
