> No, I asked because of your extreme certainty. Both in this thread and others, you repeatedly use language like "100%!", which I frankly think can only come from someone with deep domain expertise.

I can be both absolutely certain and absolutely wrong. That doesn't obligate domain knowledge of any sort.

> Unlike you, I and most others here are certainly not claiming to know beyond a shadow of doubt how a court might rule in this case (not least of which because we don't have all the facts of the case). If you're going to proclaim infallibility I think it's reasonable to have the qualifications to support it : you don't.

Where did I claim infallibility? And how about you stop with the Ad hominems? They are weak. Again, I'm not arguing that I'm infallible, I'm just absolutely certain that there is no reasonable court or jury that would consider a same-day request a reasonable request.

> This is of relevance here, because it seems pretty clear that the terminated manager was outspoken about his religious affiliation.

There is absolutely zero evidence that he was outspoken about his religious affiliation outside of the day he mentioned it, which was also the day he requested it.

And you are drawing an absurd conclusion from that statement. Information about an employee's religious needs is not the same as information about an employee's religious affiliation. Saying your Christian is not enough to automatically get Easter off.

> Indicating much of the onus falls on the employer to demonstrate that accommodating religious beliefs presents an undue hardship.

Finally we agree on something. It's absolutely up to the employer to prove that the request was an undue burden.

> In this case, I think Yelp will have a hard time demonstrating that having delegation redundancy twice a year will constitute "undue hardship".

They don't have to. They only have to prove (A) that a request wasn't made until the day of, thus the undue hardship came from having no time to "fill" this employees duties. The premise of my argument is that if Yelp received zero notice outside of the same day he wanted to start a 2 day religious observance, no court is going to consider the request reasonable.

Obviously, if he had said this well in advance then Yelp is screwed. But I can't fathom why his attorney wouldn't clearly indicate that's the case in his statement. It would make this almost obvious.

> Clearly, no methods of accommodation have been attempted in this case

Stop with the straw men. My argument isn't that Yelp attempted to accommodate, it's that his request came with zero notice, thus wasn't a reasonable request.

> So in summary, it can fairly be argued that the employer had sufficient contextual knowledge of the employee's religious affiliation to not force them to work on his religion's major holiday

I'm going to highlight this part, because you are jumping to an enormous conclusion that's just objectively wrong.

> only enough information about an employee's religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict between the employee's religious practices and the employer's job requirements

Religious needs. This case set case law that employees need not use magic words to request specific religious holidays off, but in no way can this be interpreted to mean anyone simply saying they are Christian is not specifying religious needs it's specifying affiliation.

> undermining the notion that advance notice is a hard prerequisite to providing accommodation.

By your logic simply telling someone in passing that you are going to Church means a business is now required, without notice, to give you every Sunday off. It's absolutely ludicrous.

> Yelp will also need to demonstrate that said accommodations (of which there were none) would constitute a non-hypothetical undue hardship (which will be difficult to demonstrate, since no attempts were ever made).

Of course, your summary relies on a serious misinterpretation of the difference between "religious needs" and "religious affiliation". Feel free to support your argument with case law, stating unequivocally, that simply knowing someone's religious affiliation is enough to accommodate them on all religious holidays that particular religion.

By your logic, the company being aware of his religious affiliation would also obligate them to give him Pentecost off, right?

How about if someone mentions in passing they are Muslim. Do they get to let the business know, the same day, that they need Laylat al-Qadr off? Is the business responsible for accommodating that because "they knew his religious affiliation".

Your entire argument hinges on three absurd theories:

1) He made it clear, in advance, what his religious affiliation is.

2) Knowing the religious affiliation of an employee is enough to obligate the business to provide "reasonable accommodations".

3) "Reasonable accommodations" includes giving all religious holidays off up to and including those requested the same day of the holiday itself.

I'm in no way defending that manager or Yelp. But if any of your assumptions were true there would be mountains of case law supporting these law suits. There aren't.

Everything you've said thus far ignores the "reasonable" part of "reasonable accommodation". There is nothing reasonable, on its face, about requesting two days off for religious reasons, on the same day those two days start. That's the only argument I'm making. And within the boundaries of that argument, I can't find a single case in which a same-day request for religious observance has ever even been filed let alone ruled in favor of. Can you?