Employers can push back—gently—on religious accommodation requests and don't have to grant requests that would result in an undue hardship, which is much easier for employers to show for religious accommodation requests than disability accommodation requests.
"Try your hardest to accommodate. If accommodation is easy, do it," said Kelly Dobbs Bunting, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig in Philadelphia, speaking at the Society for Human Resource Management's Employment Law & Compliance Conference on March 30 in Washington, D.C.
If an employer has tried everything else, unpaid leave is acceptable. Bunting noted that companies that previously placed employees on unpaid leave when they declined COVID-19 vaccinations for religious reasons are now bringing them back to the workplace.
Undue Hardship Analysis
An employer doesn't have to provide a religious accommodation if it poses an undue hardship to a business. If it impacts safety, the employer can also say no to the accommodation request, she said. For example, if someone wants to wear long, loose-fitting religious attire near a bagel slicer, the employer might decline the request, but try to find another position for the worker away from the bagel slicer.
A business also might reject a religious accommodation request if the accommodation would decrease workplace efficiency, such as if everyone else has to cover the worktime of the employee who is missing work regularly, she said. The other employees may wind up leaving...
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