The New Year serves as a time to take note of some significant employment law changes in the past year to longstanding rules and requirements regarding employer accommodation obligations. This article addresses a U.S. Supreme Court decision increasing protections for accommodation of employee religious beliefs. A follow-up article will cover Congress increasing employer pregnancy accommodation requirements, on which the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is overdue in finalizing regulations.
Court decisions for many decades held that an employer’s obligation to accommodate employee religious practices (under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) required less of employers than the accommodation requirements legal required for employees with medical conditions (under the Americans with Disability Act). The prior standard for religious accommodation was that an employer was not required to implement an accommodation involving more than a modest or minor cost. This came from a 1977 Supreme Court decision in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63, holding that an employer toned not alter seniority rules to accommodate an employee’s religious practice of not working on the Sabbath. Title VII and regulations under its religious discrimination provisions require employers to accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious principles and practices unless doing so would create an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's...
Turkish base fake news in Armenia For several days, a video has been circulating on social media claiming that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan allegedly signed a “secret agreement” with EU ...