Court Opinion

ID: 9520113
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:31:39.763174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:34.766337
License: Public Domain

DYKMAN, J.
(concurring)• I concur with the majority holding that the WFEA imposes a duty of reasonable accommodation on the employer and that the defendant AMC did nothing to reasonably accommodate the employee in this case.
My agreement with the majority’s conclusion concerning the first amendment establishment clause issue is a guarded one. Although the majority does not explicitly adopt a test to determine whether an accommodation is reasonable or creates a hardship, the United States Supreme Court in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63 (1977), indicated that only minimal efforts could be required of employers. In TWA, the most recent United States Supreme Court discussion of the requirements of reasonable accommodation, the court used the statutory test of “undue hardship” to define the parameters of the employer’s duty to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs under Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e (i). The court limited that duty to incurring only de minimis costs when it said at page 84: “To require TWA *43to bear more than a de minimis cost in order to give Hardison Saturdays off is an undue hardship.”
I interpret TWA as suggesting that the maximum coercion a state may constitutionally apply to an employer is tested by a “de minimis” standard. Any higher standard required by the statute would affect the overall neutrality of the statute by forcing an employer to prefer members of one religion over those of another, thus producing an infringement of the establishment clause.
On the record before us, it is impossible to determine what cost AMC would have had to bear had it accommodated Bartell’s request. Its director of industrial relations testified that were Mr. Bartell allowed to attend his church’s convention, it would have been an inconvenience to AMC, but it could have been done. AMC’s supervisor of central stores testified that had Mr. Bar-tell been allowed to attend the convention, his training program would have been elongated. There was no testimony as to what economic cost AMC would have faced had it allowed Mr. Bartell to attend the convention. It is not difficult to show a de minimis cost, but AMC did not do so.
I concur only because the standard for the extent of reasonable accommodation required is the “de minimis” test expressed in TWA.
Day, J., took no part.