Court Opinion

ID: 9476733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:03:44.924312+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:28.586417
License: Public Domain

K.K. HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that Ithaca made adequate efforts to reasonably accommodate Dean’s religious practices. For this reason, I respectfully dissent.
The majority takes the position that an employee who refuses to work on his Sabbath is being unreasonable, thereby relieving the employer of any further duty to accommodate his religious belief. In my view, the Civil Rights Act assumes that *524certain employees will not work on their Sabbath for any reason. Moreover, the Act clearly places the burden on employers to make some effort to reasonably accommodate an individual’s religious practice. I can see no indication that Ithaca made any effort at all to accommodate Dean. It is true that Ithaca did demonstrate an effort to accommodate all their employees when Sunday work was assigned.1 These accommodations, however, were clearly not for religious reasons. In addition, Ithaca made no effort to accommodate Dean by any of the methods suggested by the guidelines in the regulations.2 20 C.F.R. § 1605.-2(d)(l)(i).
The majority relies on Jordan v. North Carolina National Bank, 565 F.2d 72 (4th Cir.1977) to support its holding that there can be no reasonable accommodation for Dean’s absolute refusal to work on Sunday. However, in Jordan, the employer did make some effort to accommodate the prospective employee and was in fact accommodating another employee who refused to work on her Sabbath. The majority’s reliance on Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63, 97 S.Ct. 2264, 53 L.Ed.2d 113 (1977), is similarly misplaced. In Trans World, the employer had looked at all the alternatives available to enable it to accommodate the employee and gave the reasons why it rejected them. It thereby satisfied its statutory obligation. In this case, Ithaca made absolutely no effort at accommodation.
In my view, Dean presented a valid religious reason why he could not work on Sunday (which Ithaca acknowledged was for religious reasons), Ithaca then violated the Civil Rights Act by its failure to attempt to reasonably accommodate Dean’s religious practices.
For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the district court.

. According to testimony elicited at the trial, supervisors made an effort to be fair to all employees when assigning Sunday work because none of the employees wanted to work on Sundays.

. The regulations set out the following as examples of some means of accommodating religious practices: (a) the use of voluntary substitutes with substantially similar qualifications by publicizing policies, promoting an atmosphere in which substitutions are favorably regarded and providing a central file or bulletin board for matching substitutes; and (b) flexible scheduling by means of floating or optional holidays.