Dive Brief:
- A Trump International Hotel employee has filed a lawsuit alleging the employer revoked her religious accommodation, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Torres v. Trump Ruffin Commercial, LLC. dba Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, et al., No. 2:20-cv-00990 (D. Nev., June 2, 2020)).
- Sonia Torres, during her job interview, informed the hotel that she could not work Sundays because of her Christian beliefs. She was hired and accommodated for years, until a new supervisor made schedule changes and allegedly refused to honor the previous arrangement. The supervisor suggested Torres become an on-call employee but she declined, noting that she would lose seniority and benefits. She instead refused to report to work on Sundays and was fired.
- Torres sued, alleging the employer failed to reasonably accommodate her sincerely held religious beliefs.
Dive Insight:
Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against workers based on religion and requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee's sincerely held religious beliefs unless doing so would pose an undue hardship for the employer, according to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on religious discrimination.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), examples of common religious accommodations include an employee who needs a schedule change to attend church services or breaks that permit daily prayers at prescribed times.
Although "undue hardship" is a high bar for employers, some have successfully made that argument. Walmart prevailed in a case earlier this year involving a manager's request for Saturdays off. The nationwide retailer showed that the request would leave the store without a manager on Saturdays. In another case, the 11th Circuit determined that a nuclear power plant worker was not entitled to Saturdays off as an accommodation; the employer showed that it would have had to change its scheduling and assignment procedures for an already demanding job, hire an additional employee and risk its staffing contract with the power plant.
Additionally, the law doesn't require that employer grant a worker's preferred accommodation. For example, an employer's offer to reassign a truck driver to a less-desirable route that accommodated his requested schedule fulfilled it responsibility, the 11th Circuit said in a 2018 ruling. And an employee who was granted an exemption from mandatory overtime — instead of having it rescheduled — received an appropriate religious accommodation, the 10th Circuit held that year.
Notably, however, a jury in 2019 awarded a former dishwasher and housekeeper at a Miami hotel $21.5 million in damages, front and back pay after finding she suffered religious discrimination and retaliation. The employee was initially granted Sundays off as an accommodation for her religious beliefs but the arrangement was later revoked. The court later reduced the award to $836,000.
For HR, manager training can be key to avoiding discrimination claims. And once a manager has elevated a request, experts say a well-documented, good-faith interactive process can serve an employer well.