How To Determine Whether an Employee Has a Right to Time Off for a Religious Holiday
Yesterday I had a nice chat with Emily Friedlander of the Wall Street Journal’s The Juggle blog.
She called to discuss employee rights to time off for religious observance, in the context of making plans for the fall Jewish Holidays.
See her blog post here: When the Juggle Gets Religion.
As she correctly notes, the basic principle is that “under federal law, employers must make a reasonable accommodation for employees’ religious beliefs and practices. If a worker’s absence causes an undue burden to the employer, they can say no.”
This standard makes for a case-by-case analysis, as with requests for reasonable accommodation for disability under the ADA.
Emily also makes a good point about how employees’ desire for such time off may change over time, for reasons such as aging and having children. Such changes may not be fully appreciated or understood by employers who recall a particular employee never took the holiday off before. But what matters is whether the employee has a sincerely held religious belief; beliefs certainly may change and evolve.
The comments to Emily’s post raise some other interesting points as well. One issue is that Title VII requires not only reasonable accommodation of religious belief, but also prohibits discrimination based on religion (indeed, the accommodation rule is not in the statutory language, but implied by the EEOC and courts as an element of nondiscrimination).
So employers should also ensure that the manner in which they handle requests for time off for religious observance is consistent, without preference to particular religions.
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