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The Employer Handbook BlogHostile work environment claims are often like trees falling in the forest
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Continue reading
Articles Posted in Religion
CORRECTION: A healthcare employer agreed to pay over $10M to settle claims about a COVID shot mandate
On Friday, attorneys for over 500 current and former healthcare workers at a Midwest healthcare system announced that they had settled “the nation’s first classwide lawsuit” for employees alleging that they were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from a COVID shot mandate. Continue reading
A worker claimed religious bias over abortion rights. On Thursday, a jury awarded her over $5M!!!
In August 2017, a flight attendant sued her employer and her union in federal court. The plaintiff would amend her complaint a few times. Among the claims that remained in the final version, the plaintiff alleged that both defendants violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Carter’s religious beliefs and practices.
How, you ask? Continue reading
Following this week’s Supreme Court ruling, can private companies mandate prayer sessions at work?
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doesn’t think so. It’s suing a residential home service and repair company for violating federal law when it allegedly required employees to participate in religious prayer sessions as a condition of employment and retaliated against employees who opposed the unlawful practice. Continue reading
Is lower co-worker morale reason enough to deny a religious accommodation?
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on religion. This includes refusing to accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs or practices unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.
An “undue hardship” results in more than a de minimis cost to the employer. Objectively, paying more overtime is one example.
But what about when accommodating one employee lowers morale for others? Does that create undue hardship? Continue reading
How can unionized companies accommodate employees with religious beliefs without violating a CBA?
Back in 1977, Star Wars premiered, Seattle Slew won the Triple Crown, and the Supreme Court established that employers need not reasonably accommodate religious beliefs under Title VII if inconsistent with a collective bargaining agreement. Plus, Title VII does not require an employer to discriminate against other union employees by depriving them of seniority rights to accommodate an employee’s observance of the Saturday Sabbath.
Biden signs #MeToo arbitration bill, Philly drops masks, and EEOC updates its COVID-19 guidance
What a Friday trifecta! The only thing better that could come in threes would be a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream — with chocolate instead of strawberry and vanilla. Continue reading
Why did a federal judge call an appellate decision on private COVID-19 mandates an “orgy of jurisprudential violence?”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this blistering (albeit, PG-rated) 58-page dissent to yesterday’s non-precedential Fifth Circuit decision, in which the majority concluded that a private company’s workplace vaccine mandate could irreparably harm individuals with disabilities and strong religious beliefs. Continue reading
The rise in antisemitism should have your attention because it is squarely on the EEOC’s radar.
Over the weekend, a man held four people, including a rabbi, hostage for over ten hours at a synagogue in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Fortunately, the four hostages escaped — they were not released. Their captor died following a standoff with local and federal law enforcement officials. Continue reading
Don’t discriminate. (But, if you do, don’t make it THIS EASY for the EEOC to nail you for it.)
I have a lot of respect for human resource professionals. It’s not easy being in HR. Or so I hear.
(No one has ever confused me with someone who put the “human” in human resources. I can be more of a, shall we say, jerk.) Continue reading