Sporting a small goatee, the "Zappa" stache, a soul patch, or the "walrus"? You're in. If your facial hair strays into the realm of the "wet noodle," the "Garibaldi," mutton chops, or the elusive "Hulihee," you might run into trouble.
The federal guidelines for emergency medical technicians (EMTs) are designed to ensure a tight fit for face masks used on the job — one that entails daily encounters with severely ill patients and their bodily effluvium. If thick whiskers cross the edge of a mask, the seal could be compromised, exposing a worker to potentially dangerous pathogens, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
But what if someone's religion requires them to have facial hair? Should reasonable exceptions be made?
Those are the questions raised by a new civil case filed in Miami by a Jewish man who says an EMT school unfairly denied him training on the basis of his facial hair.
Levi Pruss, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, sued Urgent Response Training in federal court in early April, claiming the school barred him from ambulance ride-along sessions because he had short facial hair that could interfere with his mask.
Pruss claims the school was aware from the get-go that his religious beliefs compelled him to have a beard. The academy let him take classes but then allegedly changed its tune and refused to allow him on the ride-alongs, a critical part of his certification, he says. According to the complaint, the school offered him only a partial refund and sent him on his way.
Pruss is demanding damages for religious discrimination under federal civil rights law.
When reached by New Times, the school confirmed that it has facial hair grooming requirements for mask safety but offered no further details. A request for a response to the lawsuit was forwarded to a manager, who declined to comment.
Pruss, who is in his early 30s, says he signed up for an EMT certification course with the Miami school, dba Emergency Training Academy, in August 2023 in hopes of becoming a first responder. Run by current and former Miami-Dade County fire rescue and law enforcement, the academy offers EMT certification through classes, labs, and in-the-field clinical experience with ride-alongs on an ambulance, all of which are required to become an emergency medical technician.
In the lawsuit (attached below), Pruss claims he discussed the beard issue with the school's chief operating officer on orientation day, explaining that he had facial hair due to his religious beliefs but that he would keep it tight, around 1.5 mm in length. A study he showed the school indicated that facial hair of that length does not interfere with N95 masks' filtering efficiency, he says.
He claims the school's chief operating officer accommodated his request and that he attended classes for several weeks. Pruss purportedly never came close to sporting the kind of lumberjack beard or curly villain mustache that would break the seal on his respiratory masks.
But one day last September, an instructor unexpectedly took issue with his facial fuzz, he says. His teacher "stopped him at the door and instructed him to purchase a razor from CVS and shave his beard if he wanted to join the class," Pruss claims.
"[The teacher] instructed Pruss to remain standing in front of the class, insisted that Pruss' beard was longer this week, and questioned his religious beliefs in front of the other trainees," Pruss says.
A clinical coordinator cleared Pruss to attend the class that day based on his religious exemption — but the teacher later approached Pruss during a lunch break and insisted Pruss would not be able to do ride-along sessions with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue unless he trimmed his beard, the lawsuit claims. The school offered to let him do patient transports to assisted-living facilities instead, but according to Pruss, that would not have satisfied the field-training requirements for his EMT certification.
Pruss claims that when he "responded that he wanted an equal opportunity to that of his peers to participate in Fire Rescue clinical ride-alongs," the instructor "told him to leave the school." The chief operating officer later disavowed any religious accommodations made at the outset of Pruss' classes, telling him he would be processed as a "voluntary withdrawal," according to the pleading.
The school told Pruss that he was entitled to a partial refund of $751 out of the $2,200 in tuition, the complaint states.
"Emergency Training Academy has previously allowed students who are not Jewish to complete their EMT Training Program, despite their having facial hair," the lawsuit alleges.
Pruss's attorney, Ephraim Hess, has not responded to a request for comment on the case.
Religious accommodations for facial hair in the EMT and paramedic field are currently a topic of national debate and the subject of federal litigation, with the stakes high for aspiring first responders whose religions require beards, such as followers of Islam and Sikhism."Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."
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Orthodox Judaism has restrictions on shaving attributable to a passage in Leviticus, which has been translated as, "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." Some interpretations of the restrictions allow for the use of electric razors and other trimming devices so long as they are not straight razors.
NIOSH mask guidelines are strict and prohibit everything from thin stubble to sideburns that extend inside the mask boundary. The agency maintains that facial hair under the sealing edge of a respirator mask can cause exponentially more leakage as compared to clean-shaven faces.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alternate respirators on the market can accommodate EMTs and paramedics with facial hair. The EEOC, a federal agency that enforces workplace civil rights law, sued ambulance giant Global Medical Response in 2022 for allegedly refusing to grant religious exemptions to employees with facial hair who were eligible to use the alternate respirators.
The EEOC lawsuit is pending in Colorado.
