Refusal to Accommodate Muslim Prayer at Work: Religious Discrimination?

You have 1,200 employees, 25% of whom are Muslim Somalis. They request a short break at sunset to pray, as they are required to do. Sunset is in the middle of the second shift when most employees are working on a fast-moving, potentially dangerous assembly line. Granting the Muslim employees’ request could endanger other employees’ safety and shutting down the line for even five minutes would be disruptive and costly. What do you do?

This isn’t a hypothetical situation. Across the country, employers are increasingly faced with religious accommodation requests. This reflects our growing religious diversity and the growing inclination of employees to express their religious beliefs.

It has also resulted in a spike in religious discrimination charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Such charges have doubled during the last 15 years.  In 2007 alone, the number of charges increased by 15%, the largest annual increase ever.  Amazingly, religious discrimination charges are now outpacing race and gender discrimination charges. As I’ve previously noted, the EEOC’s recently issued compliance manual section on this growing employment problem is more confusing than helpful.

Employers must consider the reasonable accommodation of an employee’s religious beliefs when they conflict with work. Employers are required to make a reasonable accommodation unless it causes an undue hardship. In the past, these cases usually dealt with an employee’s inability to work on Saturday or Sunday. If you could find someone to cover for the employee or get by without the employee, you had to grant the employee’s request to be off.  If you couldn’t, an undue hardship existed, and the request could be denied.

It’s more complicated now. It’s not only days off but time to pray, facial hair, tattoos, piercings, and headdress. When employers grant these accommodations, some employees become resentful. They don’t get an extra break. They have to comply with the employer’s appearance policy or dress code. Moreover, people of other faiths may decide they want accommodations. Though most Christian denominations say to go to church on Sunday, few Christians have resisted working on Sunday.

Whether you grant an accommodation depends on all the circumstances. Givng employees five minutes to pray doesn’t sound like a burden — unless a bunch of employees want the same five minutes. If that would shut down an assembly line, that’s probably an undue hardship. On the other hand, if you can reschedule a regular break to meet the employees’ request, you probably should.

The fact that other employees are resentful isn’t an undue hardship. However, if enough employees request accommodations that scheduling becomes difficult or safety concerns arise, that sounds like an undue hardship.

More religious discrimination charges will give courts the opportunity to tell us, pretty much for the first time, what constitutes reasonable accommodation and undue hardship. Until we have enough of those court decisions to flesh out this area of employment law, don’t react in a knee-jerk fashion to an employee’s request, but do get some legal advice.

1. 

   ACU Frank says:

   October 17, 2008 at 10:37 am

   “The fact that other employees are resentful isn’t an undue hardship.”

   This is one of my biggest frustrations in dealing with any accommodation request. It usually isn’t the request that’s the problem – it’s the petty resentment and the inability of frontline managers to control or quell that resentment. I think my official HR Director uniform should be a shirt with “Get Over It. Now.” printed on the front.
2. 

   John Phillips says:

   October 19, 2008 at 9:52 am

   Well, Frank, I don’t know. I do think giving frontline managers training on this sort of thing is compeletly overlooked. It’s good thing to add to the list. I’ll add it to mine.