Saturday, May 2, 1998

Religious workers press for rights

By YONAT SHIMRON / Raleigh News & Observer

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Every Sunday morning, Michael Stout goes to church. He teaches Sunday school at 9, greets people when they enter the sanctuary at 11 and helps collect the tithes and offerings during worship.

So when his employer, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical of Clayton, N.C., ordered him to work on a Sunday two years ago, Stout not only said no, he filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor. This month, he and two former employees of the company also filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Novo Nordisk failed to accommodate their religious practice.

"When you give God the first day of the week, he sanctifies the rest," said Stout, who lives in Smithfield, N.C. "That means a lot. It's not just, 'Oh, I don't want to work on Sunday.' The Sabbath is symbolic of the rest I have in Christ."

Stout's suit against Novo Nordisk, an insulin manufacturer, highlights how Christians and other people of faith are insisting on their rights. Federal laws prohibit employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of religion.

The country's newest religious communities also are challenging discrimination laws in unexpected ways. Muslims want their Friday noon prayers. Sikh men are insisting on wearing turbans at all times. Evangelical Christians want to display Bibles on their desks and to hold prayers during office breaks. Lawyers say they have seen an increase in religious discrimination suits.

Employers are paying close attention to the law, and so is Congress. A bill wending its way through the House and Senate would make it more difficult for an employer to disregard an employee's request for religious accommodation.

The bill, called the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, requires employers to prove "significant difficulty or expense" before they can deny employees time off to practice their religion. That is a stiffer threshold than the law now provides.

The bill is sponsored by Sens. Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana, and John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts; and Reps. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, and Bill Goodling, a Pennsylvania Republican. It has won the support of a coalition of 30 religious and civil-rights organizations that say legislation now on the books is inadequate.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of their employees when doing so does not pose "undue hardship." But the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted "undue hardship" narrowly. In case after case, the court has found that a minimal or trivial cost to the employer is enough to deny the employee religious accommodation.

"Title 7 allows companies to run roughshod over the religious interests of their employees," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, referring to the Civil Rights Act. "This bill puts some teeth in the law. It's an important piece of legislation."

But not everyone is happy with the legislation, and employers are giving it a careful read to see whether it will hurt them financially.

"If an employee has to work on Sunday, I don't think we'd want to see government step in and say, 'You must let the employee off,' " said Barry Lawrence, a spokesman for the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va., a professional association of 95,000 human-resource directors. While the proposed law might hurt businesses financially, it also might discriminate against another group of people -- those who don't profess a religious belief.

"It's going to put employers in a situation where they have to require employees who are less observant to work less desirable shifts," said Jonathan Segal, a Philadelphia lawyer who advises businesses on workplace issues. "I'm not sure it's fair to employees who are less religious."

Whatever the fate of the bill, it is clear that the nation's religious communities are standing up for themselves and making their concerns heard. Blue laws prohibiting Sunday commerce and liquor sales once upheld the status quo of the nation's largest faith, Protestant Christianity. But today, as minority religions begin to demand equal treatment, Christians want to make sure they aren't excluded.

"It used to be Christians didn't have to worry about this," said Dena Davis, a professor at Cleveland Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. "Now the majority religion wants to sue because it feels the state is neutral."

Several other bills addressing religion are also before Congress. They include the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act, which is intended to aid religious adherents abroad, and the Religious Freedom Amendment, which would permit prayer on government property and in schools and courtrooms. It also would allow government to fund religious organizations and schools. In many cases the demand for greater religious accommodation is being heard.

Recently, a Raleigh resident was dismissed from her job at Hudson Belk for wearing a hijab -- the head scarf worn by Muslim women. After she filed a complaint with the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, the department store reinstated her, offering her a letter of apology and compensation for 29 missed hours. It also promised to include Islamic dress in diversity training programs.

"Our problem is not the law," said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. "It's the level of education and sensitivity of the managers and human resource people."

Stout has not had to work Sunday shifts at Novo Nordisk since November 1996, but he said he still experiences intimidation and harassment for his religious views and decided a lawsuit was his last recourse. He was joined in the suit by two employees who were fired last year for other reasons, Patricia Charnetzky and Harold Robert Crumley.

A Novo Nordisk official said the company does not discriminate against employees on the basis of religion. In response to the Labor Department's investigation, Novo Nordisk has drafted a written policy on religious accommodation. Stout's attorney, Romallous Murphy of Greensboro, N.C., acknowledged that such suits are not easily won under the current law.

"Discrimination suits are very difficult," Murphy said. "You have individuals going against a large corporation. But just because it's difficult doesn't mean you don't file them."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)