Religious Accommodation Dilemmas: Questionable Beliefs Confuse Employers

(Published July 28, 2008)

Dealing with religious accommodation requests is difficult when the religious belief is unfamiliar or when the belief is not even religious in nature. The more you learn about what is and is not covered by Title VII, the more confident you can be in handling accommodation requests. To that end, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently published compliance assistance on religious discrimination in the workplace. Here's a brief look at what it says about religious practices or beliefs that may be entitled to accommodation.

Title VII defines religion to include all aspects of religious observance, practice, and belief. Religious beliefs are covered even if they are new, uncommon, not part of a formal church or sect, subscribed to by only a small number of people, or seem illogical or unreasonable (e.g., animal sacrifice). Religion is broadly defined to include "moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views." Seems that this definition could cover just about any strongly held conviction. However, the EEOC goes on to clarify that religion typically concerns "ultimate ideas" about "life, purpose, and death," but it does not cover social, political, or economic philosophies or personal preferences.

Example: The EEOC and courts have found that the Ku Klux Klan is not a "religion" for Title VII purposes because its philosophy is narrow, temporal, and political in character. On the other hand, an employee's membership in the World Church of the Creator was protected under Title VII, even though the organization's central tenet is white supremacy, because it functioned as a religion in the employee's life, as evidenced by the fact that he had been a minister in it for more than three years, worked to put the church's teachings into practice, and actively proselytized.

When it comes to determining whether a practice is religious, employers must make a case-by-case inquiry. The determination turns on the employee's motivation, not on the nature of the activity. The same practice might be engaged in by one person for religious reasons and by another person for purely secular reasons.

Example: Vegetarianism is a religious practice for a Seventh-day Adventist who believes it is religiously prescribed by a scriptural passage; it is not a religious practice for those who follow a vegetarian diet for health or environmental reasons.

Employers are required to accommodate only "sincerely held" religious beliefs. The EEOC states that, because the definition of religion is broad and protects beliefs and practices with which the employer may be unfamiliar, the employer should ordinarily assume that an employee's request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief. However, it also noted factors that might undermine the employee's assertion, including:

• the employee has behaved in a manner markedly inconsistent with the professed belief (e.g., an employee who objects to Sunday work, but has a recent history of Sunday work);
  
  
• the accommodation sought is a particularly desirable benefit that is likely to be sought for secular reasons;
  
  
• the timing of the request is suspicious (e.g., it follows an earlier request by the employee for the same benefit for a secular reason).
  

None of these factors, alone or in combination, is dispositive, though. For example, an employee has never before sought leave from work for a religious observance and now requests leave to observe Yom Kippur. Evidence may show that certain events in her life (birth of a child, death of a parent) have strengthened her religious beliefs over the years.

In short, you can't refuse to provide a religious accommodation based on the fact that you don't know, agree with, or like the employee's belief or practice. Neither can you hold against the employee the fact that the belief or practice is not prevalent in society or even within the employee's own religious group. Unless there is evidence that the belief is not sincerely held or that the accommodation will create an undue hardship, best to err on the side of caution and attempt to reasonably accommodate.

Related Topic(s): Discrimination/Religious Discrimination