A federal judge ruled in favor of a woman after she was fired Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital after refusing Covid-19 vaccine over her religious beliefs and anti-abortion views.

Amanda Bazinet, a former executive office manager at the hospital in Milton, filed for a vaccine exemption based on a religious objection in 2021, according to court documents. She was fired when the hospital rejected her accommodation, and Bazinet took religious discrimination to court.

The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts dismissed the lawsuit last year, finding that Bazinet failed to prove that her beliefs were sincerely held and that the hospital would have suffered an undue hardship by allowing her to mask and test regularly in lieu of the vaccination.

Federal Judge Seth Aframe of the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in favor of the former employee in a 21-page opinion.

“Whether few or many share the religious view is irrelevant,” Aframe wrote. “That the hospital questions Bazinet’s factual basis for her beliefs about the development of the vaccines does not change the religious nature of the belief.”

Bazinet refused the vaccine because she is a “Christian who believes in Jesus Christ and His Holy Word, the Bible” and that “the currently available COVID-19 vaccines developed and validated their vaccines using fetal cell lines, which are derived from aborted fetuses. ” said the opinion.

She claimed the vaccine would make her “complicit in an act that not only offends, but … is a departure from (her) Christian faith,” according to court documents.

The hospital argued that many Christians who oppose abortion still receive vaccines and that her request appeared to come from “cookie-cutter, anti-vaccine forms” available online.

The hospital also argued that the factual basis of her belief — that the vaccines were developed from tissue cells from aborted fetuses — is incorrect, but the appeals court ruled that the belief is still religious in nature, Aframe wrote.

The district court ultimately ruled that her waiver request lacked “necessary factual detail,” but the appeals court disagreed, writing that the case should return to court in part because Bazinet’s views were shown to be sincere.

The judge remanded for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion to overturn the district court’s decision.

“Bazinet provided numerous quotes from religious sources that she says support her view,” Aframe wrote. “By accepting these allegations as true for present purposes, she has sufficiently invoked a religious belief contrary to receiving the covid-19 vaccine.”