DOJ Sides With Fired Coach

Students walking on a university campus with autumn trees and a historic building in the background

Federal lawyers are backing a fired college coach who says Washington State University crushed his Catholic conscience over a COVID shot.

Quick Take

The Justice Department filed an amicus brief backing former Washington State University coach Nick Rolovich.
The brief says Rolovich had sincere religious reasons for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Washington State University had a system-wide vaccine rule for in-person employees and students.
A federal judge ruled for the university in early 2025, and Rolovich appealed.

Justice Department Enters a High-Stakes Religion Fight

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has stepped into the Rolovich case on the coach’s side, telling the Ninth Circuit that Washington State University should have treated his refusal as a religious-accommodation request under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.^[3] The brief says Rolovich had sincere religious reasons for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.^[3] That matters because the case now sits at the center of a larger fight over whether public employers can demand proof of religious sincerity before cutting off a worker’s job.

Rolovich, a former Washington State University head football coach and practicing Catholic, was fired in 2021 after refusing the university’s vaccine mandate for state employees.^[1] Court summaries say he claimed the shot conflicted with his Catholic beliefs and that the school denied his religious exemption request.^[1]^[2] A federal judge later ruled for Washington State University in 2025, finding the record did not support a religious objection and describing his reasons as mainly secular.^[1]^[2] Rolovich then appealed to the Ninth Circuit.^[2]

Washington State’s Vaccine Rule Set the Stage

Washington State University had a broad COVID-19 policy that required in-person students and employees to be vaccinated, and the employee deadline was set for August 23, 2021.^[4]^[7] University materials also show that exemptions were part of the process, including religious and medical exemptions, with employees expected to declare status or request an exemption through the school’s system by the deadline.^[4]^[7] That structure is important because it shows the dispute was not about a random firing. It was about how the university applied its own policy.

The available record gives both sides some ground. On one hand, the university had a formal rule and a deadline, which supports its claim that it enforced a general policy.^[4]^[7] On the other hand, the DOJ says the lower court gave too little weight to Rolovich’s stated Catholic objection and too much weight to secular evidence in the file.^[3] That is a familiar problem in COVID-era cases, where courts and employers had to sort religious claims from personal or political objections.

Why This Case Still Matters Now

The Rolovich case reaches beyond one coach and one university. It tests how far a public employer can go when a worker says a mandate collides with faith, conscience, and a legal right to accommodation.^[3]^[5] Conservative readers will see the larger stakes clearly: if a government employer can dismiss a religious claim too quickly, then the same machinery can be used against other traditional beliefs. At the same time, the university’s policy and the district court’s ruling show that mandate disputes can survive when a judge finds the claimed religious case weak.^[1]^[2]

The record available here does not include the full WSU exemption file, the denial memo, or internal reviewer notes.^[2] That leaves one key question unresolved in public view: whether the school fairly weighed Rolovich’s religious claim before ending his job.^[2]^[3] Until the Ninth Circuit acts, the case remains a sharp example of how pandemic-era mandates still fuel conflict over religion, public employment, and the reach of government power.^[2]^[3]^[4]