Rackovan v. The Pennsylvania State University

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA
ZACHARY RACKOVAN,
Plaintiff,
v.
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE
UNIVERSITY,
Defendant.
No. 4:25-CV-00603
(Chief Judge Brann)
MEMORANDUM OPINION
MARCH 4, 2026
I. 	BACKGROUND
Plaintiff Zachary Rackovan (“Plaintiff”) filed a first amended complaint against
The Pennsylvania State University (“Defendant”) seeking recovery for four counts of
religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§
2000e–2000e-17 (“Title VII”), and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, 43 P.S. §§
951–963 (“PHRA”).1 Specifically, Plaintiff claimed that Defendant’s vaccine policy
and 	testing 	accommodations 	related 	to 	the 	COVID-19 	pandemic 	both 	violated
Plaintiff’s rights under Title VII and the PHRA.2
Defendant filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s first amended complaint under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim.3 The Court granted
1 	Doc. 16 (First Amend. Compl.) at Counts I, II, III, and IV. Plaintiff voluntarily amended his
first complaint after the filing of a motion to dismiss without Court order.
2 	Id.
3 	Doc. 19 (Mot.).
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Defendant’s motion in part, allowing Plaintiff’s claims to proceed as related to
Defendant’s vaccine policy but granting Defendant’s motion to dismiss as related to
Defendant’s testing accommodation.4 The Court held that Plaintiff had not pled a
religious objection to the testing accommodation, and that, therefore, Plaintiff had not
stated a valid failure to accommodate claim for that policy.5 I also dismissed Plaintiff’s
wrongful termination claims under each count.6 Plaintiff was provided leave to amend.7
After Plaintiff filed his second amended complaint,8 the United States Court of
Appeals for the Third Circuit issued its opinion in Federoff v. Geisinger Clinic,
clarifying the law and reversing in part two prior decisions of this Court. 9 Defendant
filed a new partial motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s second amended complaint for failure
to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6), seeking specifically to dismiss counts III and IV.10
Defendant’s motion is granted with prejudice.
II. 	LAW
A. 	Motion to Dismiss Standard
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), courts dismiss a complaint, in
whole or in part, if the plaintiff fails to “state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”
4 	Doc. 27 (Memo.).
5 	Id. at 10-11.
6 	Doc. 27 at 7.
7 	Id. at 14.
8 	Doc. 29 (Second Amend. Compl.).
9 	No. 24-2844, 2026 WL 195416, at *4-5 (3d Cir. Jan. 26, 2020) (reversing in part Finkbeiner
v. Geisinger Clinic, 623 F. Supp. 3d 458, 465 (M.D. Pa. 2022) and Federoff v. Geisinger Clinic,
571 F. Supp. 3d 376, 392 (M.D. Pa. 2021)).
10 	Doc. 30 (Mot.); Doc. 31 (Br. in Supp.) at 6.
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Following the landmark decisions of Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly11 and Ashcroft v.
Iqbal,12 “[t]o survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual
matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’”13 The
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has instructed that “[u]nder the
pleading regime established by Twombly and Iqbal, a court reviewing the sufficiency
of a complaint must take three steps”: (1) “take note of the elements the plaintiff must
plead to state a claim”; (2) “identify allegations that, because they are no more than
conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth”; and (3) “assume the[] veracity”
of all “well-pleaded factual allegations” and then “determine whether they plausibly
give rise to an entitlement to relief.”14
B. 	Facts Alleged in the Second Amended Complaint
The facts as pled have largely been recited in the prior Memorandum Opinion,
Doc. 29, and shall not be recited duplicatively here. In addition to the facts as pled in
the first amended complaint, the second amended complaint has added the following
relevant facts.
Plaintiff’s religious beliefs require that childbirth occur at home, and forbid
Plaintiff’s family from receiving any vaccines.15 Plaintiff homeschools his children to
“align with divine principles of upbringing and instruction,” and “Plaintiff’s religious
11 	550 U.S. 544 (2007).
12 	556 U.S. 662 (2009).
13 	Id. at 678 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
14 	Connelly v. Lane Construction Corp., 809 F.3d 780, 787 (3d Cir. 2016) (internal quotations
and citations omitted).
15 	Doc. 29 at ¶¶ 35-36.
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beliefs direct him and his family to follow God’s wisdom and guidance, as opposed to
fear, in making decisions in all aspects of their lives.”16
Specifically in regards to the testing accommodation, Plaintiff has newly pled
that he “holds a religious belief that he must honor the Lord with his mind, body and
soul, and based on that Biblical directive, he is forbidden to engage in medical testing
without an apparent medical justification,” and that weekly testing “without a medical
justification” would “go against his religious belief in sanctification, which is the act of
separation from that which is evil and of dedication unto God.” 17
Plaintiff additionally pleads that “[w]eekly testing for a fully remote worker is
an unreasonable burden on an employee with no valid nexus to the accommodation for
vaccination” and that requiring as much is “arbitrary and unjustified.”18
C. 	Analysis
Failure to accommodate claims under Title VII and the PHRA require the same
analysis and may be considered jointly, requiring Plaintiff to plead the applicable
elements that 1) the employee sincerely holds a religious belief that conflicts with a job
requirement; 2) the employee informed the employer about the conflict; and 3) the
employer 	disciplined 	the 	employee 	for 	failing 	to 	comply 	with 	the 	conflicting
requirement.19
16 	Id. at ¶¶ 37-38.
17 	Id. at ¶¶ 52-54.
18 	Id. at ¶¶ 68-69.
19 	Wilkerson v. New Media Tech. Charter Sch., 522 F.3d 315, 318-19 (3d Cir. 2008)
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Determining whether a belief is religious in nature is a “most delicate
question.”20 “While no court should inquire into the validity or plausibility of a
plaintiff's alleged beliefs, it is nonetheless incumbent upon the court to ensure that the
alleged beliefs are rooted in a plaintiff's religion and are entitled to the broad
protections guaranteed thereunder.” 21 Secular ideas cannot be transformed into a
religious belief by cloaking “all of life’s activities” with “religious significance.”22
Courts must differentiate between “those whose views were religious in nature and
those whose views were essentially political, sociological, or philosophical.”23 “[T]he
very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing [a plaintiff], ... a blanket privilege
to make [their] own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has
important interests.”24
In this circuit, to determine whether a belief is religious in nature, courts look to
the 	three 	Africa 	v. 	Pennsylvania 	factors: 	whether 	the 	belief 	(1) 	“address[es]
fundamental and ultimate questions having to with deep and imponderable matter,” (2)
is “comprehensive in nature,” and (3) is “accompanied by certain formal and external
signs.”25 For beliefs to be “comprehensive in nature,” they must be more than “isolated,
20 	Africa v. Pennsylvania, 662 F.2d 1025, 1031 (3d Cir. 1981).
21 	Gray v. Main Line Hospitals, Inc., 717 F. Supp. 3d 437, 446 (E.D. Pa. 2024) (internal
quotations omitted).
22 	Id. (internal quotations omitted).
23 	Fallon v. Mercy Catholic Med. Ctr. Of Southeastern Pa., 877 F.3d 487, 490 (3d Cir. 2017)
(internal quotation omitted).
24 	Africa, 662 F.2d at 1031 (internal quotation omitted).
25 	Fallon, 877 F.3d at 491 (quoting Africa, 662 F.2d at 1030, 1031).
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unconnected ideas” and cannot be “generally confined to one question or moral
teaching.”26
Once the failure to accommodate factors are established, the burden shifts to the
employer to show that it either made a “good-faith effort to reasonably accommodate
the religious belief,” or that “an accommodation would work an undue hardship upon
the employer and its business.”27 The Third Circuit’s recent Federoff opinion clarified
this point: “[a]n unreasonable accommodation of religion may be demonstrated through
two means. The accommodation may be unreasonable because it offends a sincerely
held religious belief or practice . . . [or] the accommodation may be unreasonable under
the circumstances.”28 Accordingly, if a plaintiff has met the aforementioned elements
demonstrating a religious objection to the underlying policy, he need not prove that his
objection to the accommodation is additionally religious in nature, merely that it was
unreasonable under the circumstances.29
Here, 	Plaintiff 	pleads 	two 	separate, 	independent 	counts 	of 	failure 	to
accommodate regarding the testing policy.30 However, the testing policy is also
intertwined with the vaccine policy, as the testing policy was an accommodation to the
vaccine policy.31 Accordingly, there are two avenues of analysis regarding the testing
26 	Gray, 717 F. Supp. 3d. at 446-47 (quoting Africa, 662 F.2d at 1035) (internal quotation
omitted).
27 	Equal Employment Opportunity Comm’n v. GEO Group Inc., 616 F.3d 265, 271 (3d Cir.
2010); Federoff, 2026 WL 195416, at *4.
28 	Federoff, 2026 WL 195416, at *4.
29 	Id.
30 	Doc. 29 at Counts III, IV.
31 	Doc. 29 at ¶ 47.
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policy: whether Plaintiff has plausibly pled that the testing policy was an unreasonable
accommodation to the vaccine policy, and whether Plaintiff has plausibly pled the
testing policy as an independent avenue to relief.
I’ll 	address 	the 	former 	first, 	briefly. 	As 	I 	previously 	held 	in 	my 	prior
Memorandum Opinion, Plaintiff has stated a plausible claim for relief for his failure to
accommodate claims related to the vaccine policy.32 Given the Third Circuit’s guidance
in Federoff, this is even more true now, as Plaintiff need not prove an objection based
in religion to show that an accommodation was unreasonable.33 Granting a motion to
dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) would be improper at this stage, as Plaintiff has pled
sufficient facts to plausibly render the testing policy an unreasonable accommodation
to the vaccine policy. Specifically, Plaintiff has alleged that he worked fully remotely,
and that there was therefore no need for him to test weekly when he would not be
coming into contact with Defendant’s other employees, students, or personnel. 34
Accordingly, “at the pleading stage, these allegations suffice” for Plaintiff’s claims
related to the vaccine policy, and the testing policy insofar as it functioned as an
accommodation, to survive.35
Turning now to Plaintiff’s standalone claims of failure to accommodate related
to the testing policy, Defendant’s motion to dismiss will be granted with prejudice. The
32 	Doc. 27 at 12-14. Accordingly, Defendant quite properly did not move to dismiss the claims
related to the vaccine policy.
33 	Federoff, 2026 WL 195416, at *5.
34 	Doc. 29 at ¶¶ 68-69.
35 	Federoff, 2026 WL 195416, at *5.
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additional facts as pled are insufficient to change my prior analysis, as Plaintiff’s claims
fail to qualify as a religious belief.36 Plaintiff’s second amended complaint adds that
Plaintiff’s religion directs him to avoid living in fear and to avoid coming into contact
with evil, which Plaintiff has defined as including medical testing “without an apparent
medical justification.”37 	However, these additional statements do not address the
deficiencies that my prior analysis has enumerated.38 Plaintiff’s objection remains
overbroad, akin to a “divinely granted right to pick and choose” what qualifies as evil
and what does not.39 Indeed, Plaintiff argues that “his faith forbids him to participate or
come into agreement with any aspect of the lies of the COVID agenda.”40 This is the
epitome of a belief that is “political, sociological, or philosophical” as opposed to
religious in nature.41 “Allowing Plaintiff the ability to object to anything that ‘goes
against God's will’ or [Plaintiff’s] ‘conscience’ would amount to the type of ‘blanket
privilege’ that does not qualify as religious belief under Africa.”42
36 	As such, I do not address parties’ second argument regarding whether Plaintiff adequately
informed Defendant of his beliefs.
37 	Doc. 29 at ¶¶ 38, 52-54.
38 	Doc. 27 at 10-11.
39 	Ulrich v. Lancaster Gen. Health, No. 22-4945, 2023 WL 2939585, at *4 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 13,
2023). This is evident from Plaintiff’s claimed religious objection itself, which refers to the
lack of medical justification or symptoms as reasons why Plaintiff should avoid testing. Instead
of a comprehensive avoidance of medical treatment, he asserts a right to pick and choose what
medical treatment is necessary and what would be “evil.” Such an objection need not be
credited as religious in this circuit.
40 	Doc. 32 (Br. in Opp.) at 3.
41 	Fallon, 877 F.3d at 490.
42 	Caruano v. Bayhealth Medical Center, Inc., 714 F. Supp. 3d 461, 469 (D. Del. 2024) (quoting
Africa, 662 F.2d at 1031).
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Similarly, Plaintiff’s additional pleadings that his family is to be homeschooled,
children are to be born at home, and his family is to avoid vaccines do not tie his
religious beliefs to his objection to the testing policy specifically. While they may show,
as I previously held, the religious nature of his objection to the vaccine policy and
imbibing pharmaceuticals, the pleadings do not provide information sufficient to move
Plaintiff’s objections to the nasal swab into the religious category.43 Instead, Plaintiff’s
pled objections to the testing policy attempt to cloak secular, medical beliefs with
religious significance.44 At the very least, Plaintiff’s objections remain more similar to
“isolated moral teaching[s]” than part of the Christian “comprehensive system of beliefs
about fundamental or ultimate matters.”45 Additionally, Plaintiff’s new pleadings that
he “holds a religious belief that . . . he is forbidden to engage in medical testing without
43 	See McDowell v. Bayhealth Med. Ctr., No. 24-1157, 2024 WL 4799870, at *1-2 (3d Cir. Nov.
15, 2024) (holding that “the ‘mere possibility’ that Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs informed their
objections to the vaccine” was insufficient to state a claim) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S.
662, 678-79 (2009)).
44 	See Africa, 662 F.2d at 1035. Indeed, Plaintiff repeatedly refers to Plaintiff’s perceived lack of
medical justification for the testing. Doc. 29 at ¶¶ 52, 53, 54, 62. Courts have held that medical
beliefs do not qualify as religious under the Africa factors. See Caruano v. Bayhealth Medical
Center, Inc., 714 F. Supp. 3d 461, 469 (D. Del. 2024) (collecting cases); see also United States
v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 165 (1965) (concluding beliefs that are “essentially political,
sociological, or philosophical views” are not religious). Plaintiff references repeatedly that
testing for an illness “for which Plaintiff does not show any symptoms” would violate
Plaintiff’s religious order to live free from fear. See, e.g., Doc. 29 at ¶ 59. However, the Third
Circuit has established that such overbroad, generalized objections do not qualify as religious.
See McDowell, 2024 WL 4799870, at *2-3 (holding similar objections, such as claims that
one’s body is a temple and must be treated well, would “broadly invo[ke] an overarching
religious belief without directly connecting that religious belief to the objected-to employment
term,” and would impermissibly allow an employee a blanket privilege whenever he “invokes
scripture.”).
45 	Ritter v. Lehigh Valley Health Network, No. CV 22-4897, 2024 WL 643543, at *5 (E.D. Pa.
Feb. 15, 2024).
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an apparent medical justification” and that his “religious beliefs forbid him to submit to
weekly testing without medical justification” are both conclusory statements that need
not be credited.46
Moreover, the recent Federoff decision did not address the question of whether
the objection at issue was indeed grounded in religion; rather, Federoff clarified that
when a Plaintiff has stated a valid religious objection, the provided accommodation
must be reasonable under the circumstances.47 On the topic of religious nature, the
precedent is clear.48 Plaintiff’s objection to the testing policy is not religious in nature
and, therefore, does not change my prior analysis. Defendant’s motion to dismiss is
granted.
Leave to amend is denied. 	“Among the grounds that could justify a denial of
leave to amend are undue delay, bad faith, dilatory motive, prejudice, and futility.”49 A
complaint is “futile” if even, as amended, it would fail to state a claim upon which relief
could be granted.50 	Although there is a “liberal pleading philosophy of the federal
rules” no amendment will be permitted because another opportunity to plead a case
would be futile for the reasons delineated above. 51
46 	Doc. 29 at ¶¶ 52-53.
47 	Federoff, 2026 WL 195416, at *4-5 (“[Plaintiffs] do not allege that they have a religious
objection to the nasal-swab accommodation. Nor can their religious objection be reasonably
inferred . . . . But offense to religion is not the only ground upon which an accommodation
may be unreasonable – the accommodation may be unreasonable under the circumstances.”).
48 	See, e.g., McDowell, 2024 WL 4799870; Africa, 662 F.3d at 1035; Seeger, 380 U.S. at 165;
Fallon, 877 F.3d at 491 n.14.
49 	Id. (quoting In re Burlington Coat Factory Sec. Litig., 114 F.3d 1410, 1434 (3d Cir. 1997)).
50 	Id.
51 	See Bjorgung v. Whitetail Resort, LP, 550 F.3d 263, 266 (3d Cir. 2008).
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III. 	CONCLUSION
Defendant’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, Doc. 30, is granted
with prejudice as to Plaintiff’s Counts III and IV.
An appropriate Order follows.
BY THE COURT:
s/ Matthew W. Brann
Matthew W. Brann
Chief United States District Judge
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