( September 15, 2026, 8:31 AM EDT) -- RICHMOND, Va. — A split Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to an employer on a religious discrimination claim and affirmed summary judgment to the employer on a race discrimination claim, finding that an employee’s beliefs underlying her refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine were sufficiently religious in nature but that the company’s stated reason for viewing the woman’s request as secular was not pretext for race discrimination because the company denied similar requests across races....