Opinion: Growing Trend: Employee Lawsuits Based on Religion
B>By Maria Greco Danaher
I>Attorney
In the time since Sept. 11, 2001, courts have addressed an increasing number of cases related to employees' claims of religious discrimination, including one in which an employee sued after she was asked not to use the phrase "Have a blessed day" to customers who were offended by it. The employer prevailed on that one. In another case, an individual who observed tenets of Native American Spirituality was precluded from promotions. Here, the employee won.
Under current anti-discrimination laws, it is unlawful for any employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of religion. In addition, an employer is obligated to accommodate an employee's religious observance unless the employer can demonstrate that such accommodation would create "undue hardship" for the company.
Last spring, a federal appeals court dismissed a case against Consolidated Freightways Corp. after the company was sued for religious discrimination. The case was filed by a male driver who claimed that an overnight run with a female driver violated his religious beliefs and practices. The company took the position that the male driver ("plaintiff") could not be accommodated without violating the seniority provisions of the drivers' collective bargaining agreement.
The court dismissed the case, holding that violation of a collective bargaining agreement was an "undue hardship" that could legally preclude the employee's accommodation.
The plaintiff began working for CF in 1986 as an over-the-road truck driver. During the time relevant to his lawsuit, the plaintiff was an "extra board" driver out of Nashville, Tenn. Seventy-five percent of CF's runs from Nashville were made by drivers who bid to make specific types of runs. The other 25% were completed by extra board drivers. According to the agreement in place at the time, an extra board driver could restrict his ability to work by selecting "no sleeper runs" or selecting "turn runs only." The plaintiff did not choose such restrictions.
On two occasions, the plaintiff refused to accept an assignment for a sleeper run with a female driver, stating that he was a "born again" Christian, and that it was against his religious beliefs to travel in this way with a female. On the first occasion, in December 1995, CF and a union representative accommodated him by making arrangements to switch with another sleeper team. When he returned from that trip, however, the plaintiff was told that he would have to accept the next sleeper run assignment that paired him with a female driver.
Fifteen months later, in response to another such assignment, the plaintiff informed a dispatcher that he could not accept it. The company told the driver that he was required to make the run or would be deemed a "voluntary quit." When the driver did not report for his run, his employment was terminated. Although CF eventually changed the termination to a suspension, the driver ultimately filed a lawsuit in federal court, based primarily on his claim of religious discrimination.
F's assignment procedure was part of a collective bargaining agreement negotiated with Local 480 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The procedure was based on seniority, giving the more senior drivers more choices of runs and filling in the less desirable runs with extra board drivers. Under the negotiated procedure, a driver was not allowed to reject an assignment after putting his name on the extra board. The plaintiff in this case argued that accommodation could have been made by allowing drivers to refuse one dispatch call per month, or by allowing the plaintiff to reject an assignment for "illness" if he was to be paired with a female driver. CF claimed that any such resolution would violate the provisions of the agreement and affect the job preference rights of other bargaining unit members.
The court agreed, stating that, absent a discriminatory purpose, the operation of a negotiated seniority system cannot be an unlawful employment practice, even if the system has some unintended discriminatory consequences. The court said that an employer is not obligated to deny the shift and job preferences of some employees, or deprive them of their contractual rights, in order to accommodate the religious needs of others. Because the court found no suggestion of discriminatory intent in the assignment system established by the collective bargaining agreement, it determined that Consolidated Freightways was not obligated to carve out a special exception to its seniority system to accommodate the plaintiff in his religious beliefs.
Based on the court's rationale in this case, it seems clear that the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement, when universally applied and understood, can form a valid basis for a company's refusal to make a religious accommodation that violates the terms of that agreement. However, the court's decision should not be read by employers as permission to refuse every request for religious accommodation. As the case laws stands, the burden remains on employers to make efforts to resolve conflicts involving an employee's religion before taking action adverse to the employee.
The writer counsels companies in employment-related matters in her work with the Employment and Labor Law Practice Group at the law firm of Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote in Pittsburgh.
This article appears in the Nov. 25 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
