Charges Filed by Muslims Spike Religious Discrimination Claims

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Muslim employees filed a record 803 religious discrimination charges for the year ended September 30, 2009. That’s up 20% over the year before. That exceeds the number of charges filed in the year after 9/11. There’s little doubt that these charges will set another record for the year ending September 30, 2010. The EEOC has taken this spike in Muslim-related religious discrimination charges seriously, filing several lawsuits on behalf of Muslim workers.

The charges involve allegations of being called derogatory names, having  prayer breaks stopped or interrupted, and terminating or not hiring employees for wearing Muslim-related clothing like head scarves (hijabs). If name-calling is proven, there’s a basis for a discrimination or harassment case. Affecting prayer breaks and objecting to certain kinds of dress involve the issue of providing a religious accommodation to a worker unless it causes the employer an undue hardship.

Why the uptick in discrimination charges filed by Muslims? There is, of course, the memory of 9/11. Occasional news items about young Muslims in the U.S.  being recruited by Al-Qaeda or planning a terrorist event make a lot of Americans wary, if not fearful of Muslims, not to mention the almost  daily reporting of suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Iraq or Afghanistan and killing or wounding scores of people. The furor over building a mosque at ground zero in New York has been in the news constantly. And then there’s the recurring, ridiculous speculation that President Obama is really a Muslim.

Just as I can understand how the internment of Japanese Americans could have occurred after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I can understand how Americans can harbor hostility toward Muslims in the U.S. Just as I can see how wrong the Japanese internment was, I can see how wrong it is to bunch all Muslims together under the terrorist umbrella. And when it comes to the employment arena, it’s against the law.

Two of the cases filed by the EEOC, one against Abercrombie & Fitch and the other against Disney, involve a female applicant or employee wearing a hijab. Abercrombie decided the hijab didn’t conform to the “Abercrombie look.” There’s no question about that, but there is a question about whether allowing an employee to wear the hijab at work is a reasonable accommodation. Does the non-Abercrombie look defense rise to the level of an undue hardship? Disney said that the hajib clashed with a theme it was promoting but offered to allow the Muslim employee to wear a theme-related hat containing a scarf that would fall over the female’s ears. We’re again confronted by questions of religious accommodation and undue hardship.

As I noted in two recent posts (here and here), the tension between the Muslim faith and others will likely increase animosity and discrimination charges. We can hope that the tension will be short-lived. Whether it is or not, Title VII of the Civil  Rights Act  forbids discrimination in the workplace based on religion. It also requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee’s request that she wear certain clothing as a matter of faith — unless it causes an undue hardship.

Even though Title VII has been in existence for a long time, religious discrimination charges have been few and far between. Therefore, we are covering new ground and courts will finally be fleshing out the law on this kind of discrimination. Until the law on religious discrimination and religious accommodation becomes more settled, an employer should always obtain legal advice when confronted with a situation involving an applicant’s or employee’s religious beliefs.