Opinion ID: 1641487
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Federal Courts

Text: The federal courts have had frequent opportunities to review questions dealing with religious discrimination in employment. Section 703(a)(1) of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 USC 2000e-2(a)(1), makes it unlawful for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in 1967, issued guidelines interpreting the above provision so as to oblige an employer to make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees and prospective employees where such accommodations can be made without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business. See fn 3, supra. The substance of this guideline was later incorporated into a 1972 amendment of Title VII, § 701(j), 42 USC 2000e(j), in its definition of religion. (j) The term `religion' includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee's or prospective employee's religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business. What is relevant, for purposes of analogy, to this Court's present deliberations is the response of the federal courts to the EEOC guidelines interpreting Title VII's general ban of religious discrimination before those guidelines were incorporated by the 1972 Congressional amendment. The first major case to face this issue was Dewey v Reynolds Metals Co, 429 F2d 324 (CA 6, 1970), aff'd by an equally divided court 402 US 689; 91 S Ct 2186; 29 L Ed 2d 267 (1971). While the original opinion of the Sixth Circuit panel is of doubtful precedential value due, in part, to its variety of rationales reversing the district court's ruling for the plaintiff employee who had absented himself from work due to his religious beliefs, see Trans World Airlines, Inc v Hardison, 432 US 63, 73, fn 8; 97 S Ct 2264; 53 L Ed 2d 113 (1977), on rehearing the majority of the panel pointedly expressed its viewpoint on the validity of the EEOC regulations. Nowhere in the legislative history of the Act do we find any congressional intent to coerce or compel one person to accede to or accommodate the religious beliefs of another. The requirement of accommodation to religious beliefs is contained only in the EEOC Regulations, which in our judgment are not consistent with the [Civil Rights] Act.