Religious Discrimination: Two Flavors

Two new religious discrimination cases filed or settled by the EEOC give me the opportunity to discuss what I long ago called the “two flavors” of workplace religious discrimination – a subject which I blogged about numerous times. 

In the first case, it seems that a staffing and recruiting agency interviewed an applicant who, when the subject turned to available openings in the company, disclosed that he was Muslim and possibly required a longer Friday mid-day break to attend Friday prayer.

The EEOC claimed that rather than discussing with the applicant possible reasonable accommodations for his religious observance, a requirement under Title VII, the employer’s rep “ended the interview and noted that the applicant was not hired due to his schedule and need to attend Friday prayer. … and disqualified the applicant from future employment after he asked to confirm that the reason he was not hired was due to his request for a religious accommodation.”

Pretty open and shut case if the allegations are true.

As EEOC spokesperson noted: “Title VII requires employers, employment agencies, and unions to make adjustments to the workplace environment to allow applicants and employees to practice their faith, absent undue hardship. Instead of exploring alternatives and contacting its business clients to determine if accommodation was possible, [the employer] turned away a promising candidate and violated the law."

The EEOC announced in the second case a settlement of $60,000 where it was alleged that an employee who was “an adherent of Messianic Judaism, requested a reasonable accommodation of his religious belief requiring abstaining from work on religious observance days.” The interesting twist to this case is that the employer allegedly refused to permit a schedule modification because it doubted the sincerity of the employee’s beliefs “because he was unable to provide a certification from a religious leader or religious organization supporting his request” - the employee apparently was not a member of a congregation. He was allegedly forced to resign.

Employers: Courts almost always accept the sincerity of an employee’s professed religious beliefs: an EEOC attorneys noted that “An employee’s religious beliefs need only be sincerely held by the employee to be entitled to reasonable accommodation under the law and do not have to be verifiable by any other person.”

Now I can cannibalize my earlier posts and discuss religious discrimination in more depth.  

As I noted years ago, and above, “cases of religious discrimination in the workplace generally come in two flavors (not always, of course): employers prohibiting religious garb or religious grooming, or discriminating as to an employee’s observance of religious beliefs.”

I’ll tick off a few cases which I noted back then.  We see the same cases arising now.

Religious Garb

1.      A New Mexico diner was sued by the EEOC for allegedly failing to accommodate a Muslim employee who asked to be permitted to work while wearing a hijab – a head scarf.

2.      The EEOC settled a religious discrimination case filed against a Florida staffing company for the hospitality industry. It was alleged that an employee, who was a Rastafarian who wore dreadlocks as part of his sincerely held religious belief, was taken off his assignment and never reassigned because he refused to comply with a client-hotel’s grooming policy by not cutting off his dreadlocks.

3.      A company that designs and manufactures automotive brake components, and its staffing agency, were sued by the EEOC for religious discrimination in hiring. The would-be employee, who had been made an offer of employment, was “an observant member of the Apostolic Faith Church of God and True Holiness, a Pentecostal Christian denomination. [She] holds the religious belief that she cannot wear pants because she is a woman, and that she is commanded to wear skirts or dresses.”

However, the would-be employer has a dress code policy which mandates that employees wear pants.

Something had to give: The employer directed the agency not to hire her, and her offer of employment was withdrawn. Corporate dress policy would not bend to religious beliefs as to dress.

An EEOC attorney said that “We are particularly concerned when the accommodation requested is easy to provide and the employer appears to have reacted to myths or stereotypes about a religion.”

Religious Observance

1.      The new cases cited above are prime examples of an employer refusing to accommodate a religious belief related to religious observance.

2. In a settled case, a logging company agreed to pay $53,000 for refusing to accommodate a truck driver’s religious belief – he is Hebrew Pentecostal – and firing him because he “observes a Sabbath which begins at sunset on Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday.”

 3.      A South Carolina company hired a Hebrew Pentecostal truck driver who told them that he could not, for religious reasons, work on the Sabbath, but it eventually fired him for refusing to do so. The EEOC sued the company.

4.      A post I did a few years back involved a North Carolina company which hired a Seventh-day Adventist truck driver whose religious beliefs require that he not work on the Sabbath.  “The company’s facilities were usually closed on Saturdays and employees only worked Saturdays on limited occasions … but the company asked [him to work on a particular] Saturday.” He asked for an accommodation for his religious beliefs but was refused – and fired.

Takeaway

Title VII requires employers to provide a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs unless unduly burdensome

An EEOC attorney said that “Federal law requires employers to fairly balance an employee’s right to practice his or her religion and the operation of the business. For an accommodation to be meaningful under Title VII, it both must respect the employee’s religious beliefs and permit her to do her job effectively.”

And accommodations are usually not that costly, or even burdensome.  Indeed, another EEOC official stated previously that “Many times when there is a conflict between an employee’s religious beliefs and a work rule, there are easy modifications to company policy permitting an employee to continue to work without violating his religious beliefs.”