200 Days of EEOC Action to Protect Religious Freedom at Work

WASHINGTON – For more than six decades, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has enforced Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace. In the past 200 days of the Trump Administration, the EEOC has taken a series of enforcement actions to defend the religious liberty of American workers. These efforts span multiple industries and issues, including Covid-19 vaccine mandates, religious accommodations in general, and rising antisemitism in higher education.

“Title VII recognizes the reality that religious freedom is a fundamental right that transcends workplace policies,” said EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas. “During the previous administration, workers’ religious protections too often took a backseat to woke policies. Under my leadership, the EEOC is restoring evenhanded enforcement of Title VII—ensuring that workers are not forced to choose between their paycheck and their faith.”

Robust EEOC enforcement actions over the first six months of the Trump Administration have delivered significant victories for Americans of all faiths and reflect the agency’s strong, ongoing commitment to upholding religious liberty protections for workers.

Vaccine Mandates

• Following widespread government and employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates during the Biden Administration, the EEOC received more than 10,000 religious accommodation charges related to this issue as well as more than 6,000 disability accommodation charges.
• To date, the EEOC has recovered over $55 million for workers impacted by these mandates—most recently, this week’s $1 million settlement with Mercyhealth. During the Biden Administration, almost all of the agency’s important work enforcing Title VII in the wake of COVID-19 vaccine mandates happened both silently and too slowly. No longer. Under the Trump Administration, the EEOC is taking bold and aggressive steps to remedy the widespread civil rights harms during the pandemic—the first public fruits of which are reflected below.
• In the $1 million Mercyhealth resolution, the EEOC settled via conciliation a class-wide cause finding that the healthcare system failed to grant its employees religious accommodations to the employer’s vaccine mandate, instead terminating employees or withholding pay. In addition to recovering substantial monetary compensation for a class of employees, the EEOC also secured an important commitment that Mercyhealth would offer to reinstate employees terminated for refusing to comply with the organization’s COVID-19 vaccine policy.
• The EEOC filed two lawsuits against Silver Cross Hospital for denying religious and disability-based COVID-19 vaccine exemptions, underscoring that employers must accommodate workers’ faith and disabilities absent undue hardship.
• The EEOC filed a lawsuit against Mayo Clinic for allegedly violating Title VII by refusing a security guard’s request for a religious accommodation to its COVID-19 vaccination policy to—mask and test instead of being vaccinated—effectively forcing him to choose between his job and his sincerely held religious beliefs.
• The EEOC settled COVID-19 vaccine-related conciliations with Aria and Luxor, two resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. The EEOC investigated the allegations and found reasonable cause to believe both resorts violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Each company agreed to provide Title VII training to its human resources department, with a specific focus on religious accommodations.
• The EEOC settled a COVID-19 vaccine-related conciliation with Infinity Rehab after the EEOC found reasonable cause to believe the employer unlawfully denied religious accommodations to its vaccine mandate.
• The Department of Justice (DOJ) settled a COVID-19 vaccine mandate lawsuit arising from a teacher’s EEOC charge in which the EEOC found reasonable cause that discrimination occurred.

Other Religious Accommodations

• The EEOC resolved a case alleging The Venetian Resort Las Vegas denied religious accommodations to employees of various faiths and retaliated against those who opposed the discrimination, leading to discipline, lost promotions, and termination or constructive discharge. The resort will pay $850,000 and implement significant policy changes under a three-year consent decree, including employee training and independent monitoring.
• The EEOC sued The Rock Snowpark after an employee was fired over faith-based social media posts which made no mention of the workplace or coworkers. Acting Chair Andrea Lucas previously stated, “While employers must remain alert to potential harassment in the workplace, religious statements made outside of work that do not reference or impact anyone in the workplace do not constitute unlawful harassment.”
• The EEOC filed a lawsuit against timeshare companies under the Marriott corporate umbrella, alleging Marriott failed to accommodate a sales executive’s request to observe the Sabbath in accordance with her faith. This discrimination and violation of Title VII forced the employee to choose between showing up for work or adhering to her religious practice, ultimately leading her to resign. In a similar case, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Omni Hotels for denying a worker’s request to not work on the Sabbath and later retaliated against the employee by substantially reducing his hours.
• The EEOC filed a lawsuit against CEMEX Construction Materials Florida after the company failed to accommodate to a mixture truck drivers request to wear a skirt. The employee, an Apostolic Christian, wore close-fitting skirts over her work pants and was in compliance with company policy; however, the company forced the employee to choose between wearing a skirt or losing her job.
• The EEOC secured a $61,000 settlement with The Teeth Doctors, a North Carolina dental clinic, for firing an employee over her request to wear a scrub skirt for religious reasons, with the agreement requiring policy changes and supervisor training on religious accommodations.

Combating Antisemitism in Universities and on College Campuses

Protecting Federal Employees’ Religious Rights

• The EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations recently announced noteworthy decisions on two religious discrimination appeals, protecting religious liberties for the federal workforce. These decisions signify EEOC’s renewed and ongoing commitment to timely and even-handed application of anti-discrimination law to the federal workforce.

Serving on Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias

The EEOC’s recent enforcement actions represent only a small fraction of work to protect American workers from religious discrimination in the workplace.

Lucas said, “Even when our work can’t yet make headlines because of Title VII’s strict confidentiality provisions, the EEOC is actively enforcing the law to ensure that workers can live out their faith without fear of discrimination or harassment. These recent actions are just a glimpse of our ongoing efforts to protect religious liberty in every American workplace.”

The EEOC will continue to prevent and remedy instances of religious discrimination at work to ensure equal opportunity for individuals of all religions. For more information on religious discrimination, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/religious-discrimination.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; the EEOC is responsible for investigating charges against state and local government employers before referring them to DOJ for potential litigation. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.

Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC.gov)