Whether you’re an employer or an employee, it’s important for you to know about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines relating to religious discrimination.
The law prohibits covered employers from refusing to recruit, hire or promote individuals of a certain religion, imposing stricter promotion requirements for persons of a certain religion, and imposing more or different work requirements on an employee because of that employee’s religious beliefs or practices.
Some discriminatory practices are conspicuous. Most people are aware that it is illegal for an employer to pay Christian employees less than Jewish employees, post a job announcement only at a Hindu temple, refuse to hire evangelical Christians, ridicule a Sikh’s turban, promote only Catholic employees to management positions, or require all employees to attend Buddhist meditation sessions.
Other means of discrimination are not as obvious, so employers and employees may be unaware of all of their rights and obligations.
For example, an employer must make an exception to its otherwise nondiscriminatory dress and grooming requirements, unless it would pose an undue hardship, once it learns that an employee desires an accommodation for his or her sincerely held religious beliefs.
That is, if an employer, not intending to discriminate against anyone, has a dress code prohibiting head coverings (perhaps thinking baseball caps look unprofessional), this dress code is likely to be found discriminatory unless the employer accommodates an employee who wears a hijab, turban, or yarmulke for religious reasons.
Other examples of religious dress and grooming practices include wearing a Christian cross or Rastafarian dreadlocks, as well as refusals to wear religious articles or revealing clothing and refusals to cut one’s hair or shave one’s beard.
Employers are also prohibited from assigning employees to non-customer contact positions because of their religious dress and grooming practices.
Another less evident discriminatory practice relates to permitting the use of employer facilities for religious practices. For example, an employee without a private office might want to use one of the company’s unoccupied rooms to pray during a break. Unless this poses an undo hardship, the employer must grant this request. Schedule changes must also be granted unless there will be an undue hardship.
Under the new guidelines, if an employee fails to provide enough information for the employer to fully assess the request for an accommodation, the employer has an obligation to follow up and request more information. Outright denial of a request due to vagueness or lack of clarity is now considered a violation.
The guidelines specifically state that disgruntled customers are not considered undue hardship, even if those customers stop frequenting a business as a result of an employee’s religious dress or grooming practices. Safety, security and health problems as well as a “more than de minimis” cost or burden on operations are considered undue hardships.
If an employee’s requested accommodation would cause an undue hardship, the employer must explore alternative accommodations rather than simply rejecting the request for accommodation.
The EEOC’s revised Compliance Manual makes clear that employees who do not have religious beliefs or engage in religious practices are protected by the laws prohibiting religion-based discrimination. However, social, political, and economic philosophies, as well as mere personal preferences, are not religious beliefs under the law.
The updated manual also heightens the standard for religious harassment claims. Now, actions won’t be considered harassment unless they are so “severe or pervasive that the employee objectively and subjectively finds the work environment to be hostile or abusive.”
These rules do not apply to certain religious organizations or to employers with fewer than 15 employees, though there may be state laws that do apply to such employers, so it is important to verify your state’s law.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about these guidelines or any other employment issues. You may also be interested in Employment Law (in Plain English)®, by Leonard D. DuBoff, Kenneth A. Perea, Christopher Perea, and Lauren Barnes, available from Allworth Press, Bookshop, Powell’s Books, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
