SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. – On Tuesday Fire District 8 held a Board of Fire Commissioners Special Meeting to address a religious exemption filed by a paramedic with the district.
“Now I am being told that there are no reasonable accommodations that can be made for me to continue working for fire district 8,” said Cory Miles, a paramedic for Fire District 8.
Miles filed a religious exemption with the district to avoid getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Miles and the fire district say that exemption was approved however, the story doesn’t end there.
The Board of Commissioners approved the exemption but then decided making accommodations to protect Miles, his colleagues, and the community would be too difficult.
The fire district says the accommodation process is to ensure there is a viable plan to protect everyone in the workforce.
“Subsequent to that a determination was made that it may cause an undue burden to the district to provide a reasonable accommodation for that accommodation,” The Board said.
An undue burden or hardship is defined as a more than minimal cost to the employer, in this case Fire District 8.
“Because of all the requirements that need to go in place and the inability to potentially maintain a safe and healthy work environment for the workplace and the community,” The Board said.
Basically the fire district believes that granting this exemption would make it too difficult to protect miles, his colleagues, and members of the community. Thus Fire District 8 sent a letter of separation to Miles.
“So we provided that letter saying that as of a certain date that we would look for separation,” the fire district said.
Commissioners added that Tuesday’s meeting was to gather new information before making a final decision.
“So this today is a fact finding piece because there is additional information to provide to the board for them to make a better decision based on all of the info provided today,” the board said.
As of now a final decision has yet to be made, but as it stands if nothing changes Miles will go on administrative leave the last week of October.
