Forms of Discrimination : Religion |
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Religious discrimination can occur when you don’t have the same religious or philosophical beliefs as someone else, or because you have no religious beliefs, and because of that someone treats you less favorably than somebody else who does share their religion or belief.
Employers may not treat employees or applicants more or less favorably because of their religious beliefs or practices - except to the extent a religious accommodation is warranted. For example, an employer may not refuse to hire individuals of a certain religion, may not impose stricter promotion requirements for persons of a certain religion, and may not impose more or different work requirements on an employee because of that employee's religious beliefs or practices.
Employees can not be forced to participate -- or not forced participate -- in a religious activity as a condition of employment.
Employers must reasonably accommodate employees' sincerely held religious practices unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employer. A reasonable religious accommodation is any adjustment to the work environment that will allow the employee to practice his religion. An employer might accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices by allowing: flexible scheduling, voluntary substitutions or swaps, job reassignments and lateral transfers, modification of grooming requirements and other workplace practices, policies and/or procedures.
An employer is not required to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs and practices if doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employers' legitimate business interests. An employer can show undue hardship if accommodating an employee's religious practices requires more than ordinary administrative costs, diminishes efficiency in other jobs, infringes on other employees' job rights or benefits, impairs workplace safety, causes co-workers to carry the accommodated employee's share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work, or if the proposed accommodation conflicts with another law or regulation.
Employers must permit employees to engage in religious expression, unless the religious expression would impose an undue hardship on the employer. Generally, an employer may not place more restrictions on religious expression than on other forms of expression that have a comparable effect on workplace efficiency.
Employers must take steps to prevent religious harassment of their employees. An employer can reduce the chance that employees will engage unlawful religious harassment by implementing an anti-harassment policy and having an effective procedure for reporting, investigating and correcting harassing conduct.
It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on religion or for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under Title VII. The laws against religious discrimination present employers with a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, you can't make employment decisions based on a person's religion. On the other, you might have to take an employee's religion into account when making certain workplace decisions.
This apparent contradiction comes from the fact that religion is not just a characteristic -- it is also a set of practices and beliefs. The law prohibits you from discriminating based on the fact of someone’s religion (for example, that an employee is Jewish or Catholic or Baptist). However, it also requires you to make allowances for a person’s religious practices and beliefs (for example, that an employee needs time after lunch to pray or that an employee needs Saturdays off to observe his or her Sabbath). The first part is fairly simple. You can’t refuse to hire someone because he or she is Jewish; you can’t promote someone because he or she is Muslim. There is a very rare and narrow exception to this rule, called the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) requirement. If the nature of the job you are filling absolutely requires that it be filled by an employee of a particular religion -- for example, if you are hiring priests in the Catholic Church -- then you can make religion part of your hiring criteria. In all other situations, however, your job-related decisions must be based on nondiscriminatory reasons.
You must work with your employees to make it possible for them to practice their religious beliefs -- within reason. This might mean not scheduling an employee to work on his or her Sabbath day or relaxing your dress code so that an employee can wear religious garments.
In legal parlance, these allowances are called accommodations. You are required to accommodate your employees' religious practices and beliefs unless doing so would cause your business too much hardship. For instance, if changing an employee's schedule to accommodate a religious belief would wreak havoc with your seniority system and cause severe morale problems among your other employees, you might not have to accommodate the worker.
The Bona Fide Occupational
Qualifications Rule
Although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from discrimination based on religion, sex, age, national origin and color at the workplace, the law does provide for certain exceptions to the rule. The Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications rule (BFOQ) allows for the hiring of individuals based on race, sex, age, and national origin if these characteristics are bona fide occupational qualifications.
To meet the criteria for a bona fide occupational qualification, an employer must prove the requirement is necessary to the success of the business, demonstrate its necessity by a verifiable method, and prove that the rational basis for this preference for a certain type of employee is rooted in a substantial belief that anyone outside of the preferred class does not have the proper qualifications. An employer must be able to demonstrate a necessity for a certain type of workers because all others are devoid of certain characteristics necessary for employment success.
Examples of BFOQ's are mandatory retirement ages for bus drivers and airplane pilots, manufacturers of specific sex clothing advertising for only male or female models, or churches requiring members of its clergy being a certain denomination. However, for positions at a church such as janitors, it would be illegal to discriminate based religious denomination, as religion has no effect on a person's ability to fulfill the duties of the job. Other examples of bona fide occupation qualifications include the use of models and actors for the purpose of authenticity or genuineness and the requirement of emergency personnel to be bilingual, judged on language competency, not national origin. Employers are also allowed to select employees by asserting a bona fide occupational qualification for safety reasons. Safety BFOQ's are proven by demonstrating how discrimination meets the goal of public safety and that no better alternatives exist.
Limitations to BFOQ include arbitrary, unproven assumptions. Examples of biases include hiring only women as nurses because women are assumed to be more nurturing and caring, or selecting members of a certain sex or racial group because they are perceived to be more aggressive. Decisions are also prohibited from being made on the grounds of co-worker or customer preference. Choosing to not hire a disable receptionist, based on co-worker preference, would be an example of a discriminatory practice and not a legitimate BFOQ.