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Employer's Duty to Accommodate Religion Not Unlimited

A company is not required to grant all requests to accommodate an employee's religion and may legally fire a worker for violating attendance policies to observe religious holidays, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected a worker's religious discrimination claims, concluding that Firestone Fibers & Textiles Co. reasonably accommodated his religious beliefs.

According to the opinion, David Wise started working in Firestone's North Carolina testing laboratory in 1994. The company required at least one person to work in the lab when certain fabric was being treated.

In 2001 Wise joined the Living Church of God, which he said prohibits members from working during the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. He also said he could not work on seven sets of religious holidays, totaling 20 days a year.

Wise initially had no attendance problems because his shift did not conflict with the Sabbath, and he often used vacation days for non-Sabbath observances, the opinion says.

At some point Firestone laid off several employees, restructured operations and required Wise to change his work position and shift, according to the opinion. His time slot went to employees with more seniority, it says.

Wise subsequently asked superiors for an accommodation to observe religious holidays, according to the record. After considering his request, Firestone said each day he sought to miss work would conflict with collective bargaining agreements and seniority requirements.

The company said he would have to rely on the standard attendance accommodation that covered all employees, which consisted of 15 vacation days and three floating holidays.

Employees also were permitted to swap shifts twice per quarter and to take up to 60 hours of unexplained, unpaid leave, the opinion says.

Any employee who used more than 60 hours of unpaid leave was subject to termination.

Wise was fired in September 2002 after missing work to observe two religious holidays even though he had used up his remaining unpaid leave.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Firestone on his behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, alleging religious discrimination and failure to accommodate in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wise intervened in the suit.

The District Court granted the company's motion for summary judgment, saying "no reasonable juror could find that Firestone had failed to satisfy its obligations under Title VII."

The EEOC appealed, and the 4th Circuit affirmed.

The appeals panel said Title VII's requirement that employers "reasonably accommodate" a worker's religious beliefs does not mean it must totally accommodate such beliefs.

"This is not an area for absolutes," the panel said. "Religion does not exist in a vacuum in the workplace. Rather, it coexists, both with intensely secular arrangements such as a collective bargaining agreements, and with the intensely secular pressures of the workplace."

The panel noted that several mechanisms allowed Firestone to reasonably accommodate employee requests for religious accommodation, including the seniority-based bidding system for work shifts, the governing CBA's provision of vacation days and floating holidays, allowing employees to swap shifts, and an attendance policy that provided 60 hours of unpaid leave for any reason.

Finally, the court rejected the EEOC's argument that Firestone could have solved the problem by allowing Wise more than 60 days of unpaid leave.

"It is well-established that Title VII does not require an employer to violate the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, especially provisions pertaining to seniority-based scheduling," the panel said.

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The EEOC is represented by agency attorneys Vicki Rowan in Charlotte, N.C., and James Tucker, Ronald Cooper and Lorraine Davis, all in Washington.Counsel for Firestone are H. Bernard Tisdale and James Spears of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart in Charlotte.