In religious discrimination cases under
Title VII, courts are often reluctant to “play God” by deciding what is or is
not a sincerely held religious belief or practice. The cases usually hinge on
whether the employer reasonably accommodated the employee’s religious conflict
with a workplace policy, or whether the requested accommodation imposed an
undue hardship on the employer. As noted
in my original article “The Employee with the Dragon Tattoo”, even tattoos and
piercings have been recognized as sincerely held religious practices.
However, the
California Court of Appeals has held that a prison guard’s self-created church
of “Sun Worshiping Atheism” is not a protected religion, and the
employer had no duty to accommodate the plaintiff’s belief in getting a full
night’s sleep by waiving mandatory overtime hours. [Marshel Copple v. California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (Cal. Ct. App. 4th Dist.)]
When
hired at the prison, Marshel Copple was told there was mandatory
overtime. However, shortly after being hired, he requested to work only 8 hour
shifts based on Sun Worshiping Atheism’s religious tenets of praying in the
sun, exercising, socializing, getting fresh air, sleeping well and being
skeptical in all things. When the prison
declined to accommodate his request, he refused to work three overtime shifts
and subsequently resigned, claiming constructive discharge. He filed an EEOC
Charge, which was dismissed and and subsequently brought suit under California’s Fair
Employment and Housing Act. Following a
summary judgment ruling against him in a lower court, he appealed the adverse
ruling.
In
affirming the dismissal of the lawsuit, the California appellate court held
that religions address “fundamental and ultimate
questions having to do with deep and imponderable matters”, and that Sun
Worshiping Atheism was simply a practice of living a healthy lifestyle, with
none of the trappings of a religion.
In my post “Sign of the Beast Hand Scanning Case Provides Valuable Lesson to Employers", I
discussed how an employer’s failure to accommodate an employee’s religious
beliefs resulted in a high dollar jury verdict for the employee. In that case, the employee was denied a
reasonable accommodation to his religious belief that the technology behind the
employer’s hand scanning time clock system had a connection to the “mark of the
beast” as alluded to in the Book of Revelation in the New
Testament of the Bible.
However in a recent similar case, the United States Court
of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found in favor of the employer, where the
employee refused to provide a Social Security number because he considered it
the “mark of the beast.” In Yeager v. FirstEnergy Generation Corp. (6th Cir.), the Sixth
Circuit held an employer has no duty to accommodate a religious belief where
such an accommodation would violate a federal statute, which in this case,
required the employer to collect and report the Social Security numbers of
their employees.
Mark Fijman is a labor and
employment attorney with Phelps Dunbar,
LLP, which has offices in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas,
Alabama, North Carolina and London. To view his firm bio,
click here. He can be reached at (601) 360-9716 and by e-mail at fijmanm@phelps.com
