Articles Posted in Religion

Last month, following an airline’s loss in a religious bias lawsuit brought by a former employee, a Texas federal judge issued a scathing 29-page decision in which he ordered the airline to have three of its lawyers complete 8 hours of religious-liberty training each. Read this post if you want more background on the lawsuit.

Predictably, the airline appealed the lower court’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It also asked the sanctioning judge to stay his order requiring training. That last part didn’t go so well.

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I promised you a doozy today, and I plan to deliver!

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Did you know that in 2022, claims of religious discrimination at work filed with the EEOC were up over 650% from the previous year? SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY PERCENT!

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 creates a statutory obligation for covered employers to make reasonable accommodations for workers’ religious observances, short of incurring an undue hardship. At a minimum, aggrieved employees generally must establish three elements in a failure-to-accommodate lawsuit:

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About 50 years ago, Congress tweaked Title VII, a federal law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against workers based on their religion. It clarified that employers must “reasonably accommodate. . . an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice” unless the employer is “unable” to do so “without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”

But what does that mean? Continue reading

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from discriminating against employees based on religion. As the EEOC points out, “the law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.”

While the law may not protect folks who pray to flying spaghetti monsters, Title VII can apply to others who are not members of conventional religious groups. As the EEOC notes, “just because an individual’s religious practices may deviate from commonly-followed tenets of the religion, the employer should not automatically assume that his or her religious observance is not sincere.” Continue reading

Yesterday, the EEOC released a new fact sheet on “What To Do If You Face Antisemitism at Work,” which, according to this survey, is a relatively common occurrence. Continue reading

I’ll explain why a federal court determined the complaint of a sports radio talk show host failed to state a claim upon which relief could be based. Continue reading

Having done this now for over two decades, I understand how employers can often make employees feel underappreciated and even wronged. But not every slight and annoyance is tantamount to discrimination or retaliation.

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