A decision earlier this week by a Federal District Court Judge here in Minneapolis offers some very useful guidance on accommodating requests for religious accommodations by employees. 

Celestica Corporation operates a manufacturing plant in Arden Hills.  Adecco USA provides temporary employees to Celestica.  The plaintiffs are practicing Muslims who allege that Celestica discriminated against them by failing to accommodate their religious duty to pray five times each day.  In particular, Celestica permitted employees to take unscheduled breaks for personal reasons (such as to use the bathroom), but did not permit plaintiffs to take unscheduled breaks to pray.  Celestica instead argued that it offered the employees a reasonable accommodation by giving them the opportunity to transfer to a different shift which would be more amenable to pray breaks. 

 The Court first found that Celestica’s proposed accommodation — allowing the Muslim employees to transfer to the first shift — would not necessarily have resolved the conflict because different employees had different believes about when they were required to pray.  “Given the variance in the religious beliefs at issue in this case, the Court cannot conclude that, because the first-shift employees may be satisfied with their schedule, an offer to transfer to the first shift would have fully resolved the religious conflict for each of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit.”  While also recognizing that a company is not required to offer an accommodation that completely eliminates the conflict, the Court decided that the reasonableness of Celestica’s proposed solution was a factual issue that it could not decide at this stage of the case.    (In fact, as the Court recognized, an accommodation may be reasonable even if it does not completely eliminate the employee’s religious conflict.) At trial, Celestica could still argue that the proposed accommodation would result in an unreasonable hardship.

 The Court also offered guidance on how a jury might decide whether a proposed accommodation was reasonable:

“It turns on fact-intensive issues such as work demands, the strength and nature of the employee’s religious conviction, the terms of an applicable CBA, and the contractual rights and workplace attitudes of co-workers. Bilateral cooperation under Title VII requires employers to make serious efforts to accommodate a conflict between work demands and an employee’s sincere religious beliefs. But it also requires accommodation by the employee, and a reasonable jury may find in many circumstances that the employee must either compromise a religious observance or practice, or accept a less desirable job or less favorable working conditions.”

 The Court did offer some rules for determining whether a given accommodation is reasonable. For example:

• An employer is not required to deprive other employees of their contractual rights in order to accommodate an employee’s religious needs.
• An employer is required to offer a reasonable accommodation, not the accommodation preferred by the employee. Thus, if the employer has offered one reasonable accommodation, the employee cannot insist on a different reasonable accommodation, even if the preferred accommodation would not inflict undue hardship on the employer.
• An accommodation may be reasonable even though it imposes some costs on the employee.  At the same time, the extent of and justification for the costs imposed on the employee are relevant to the reasonableness of the employer’s efforts to accommodate.  
• An accommodation might be unreasonable if it imposes a significant work-related burden on the employee without justification.  However, if  there are two possible accommodations, neither of which would impose any cost whatsoever on the employer, but one of which would inflict such drastic personal hardship on the employee that the employee could not possibly accept it. In such a case, the employer’s decision to offer the accommodation that inflicts drastic personal hardship — with no corresponding benefit to the employer — would not seem “reasonable.”
• The reasonableness of any accommodation also depends on the nature of the employee’s religious beliefs and how they conflict with the employee’s work duties.

In summary the Court indicated that what is “reasonable” is difficult to boil down to a set formula. Instead, the determination of reasonableness is quintessentially a fact-bound inquiry that depends on the unique circumstances of each case.  Of course, this makes it more difficult for defendants to obtain summary judgment on this type of case, and easier for plaintiffs to get their case in front of a jury.

accommating religious beliefs, prayer breaks, religious discrimination