Not every denied accommodation becomes a viable lawsuit. Courts are still asking a simple threshold question before a discrimination case goes anywhere.
TL;DR: In a recent Eleventh Circuit decision, the court affirmed summary judgment for the employer, holding that a denied religious accommodation does not violate Title VII unless it results in a real, non-speculative change to a term or condition of employment. Where the employee kept working, kept praying, and suffered no discipline, pay loss, or job change, there was no actionable adverse employment action.
📄 Read the Eleventh Circuit’s decision
The accommodation request and what happened next
The employee worked on a moving assembly line and requested a religious accommodation to take prayer breaks at specific times during the day. Because prayer times are based on the sun’s position, the timing changed daily and often fell outside scheduled breaks.
A supervisor observed the employee praying during an unscheduled break and told him he was not permitted to take those additional breaks. The accommodation was denied.
But the denial did not change what followed.
The employee continued taking unscheduled prayer breaks. He never missed a prayer. He was never disciplined, written up, reassigned, docked pay, or terminated. His duties, schedule, and compensation stayed the same.
Those facts decided the case.
The only question that mattered
The court focused on a single issue under Title VII: did the denial of the accommodation actually change a term or condition of employment?
Here, nothing did.
The employee stayed in the same role, on the same schedule, for the same pay. He kept praying. He suffered no discipline or penalty of any kind.
The employee argued that the risk of discipline itself was harm. The court rejected that argument. Speculation is not an adverse employment action. Risk of discipline is not discipline.
Emotional distress, anxiety, or a perceived loss of status, without a concrete job consequence, were not enough.
Title VII still requires something tangible to change. Here, it did not.
Practical takeaways for employers
- A denied religious accommodation, without real job consequences, is not actionable under Title VII.
- Fear of discipline or hypothetical outcomes does not substitute for an adverse employment action.
- Courts focus on what actually changed at work, not how the denial felt.
- Discipline, pay loss, schedule changes, or diminished duties would likely change the analysis.
Bottom line
This decision is not a free pass to deny religious accommodations. It reinforces a narrower point about where Title VII liability begins.
Courts still look for consequences, not just conflict. If nothing about the job actually changes, courts aren’t going to call it discrimination.