He flagged the conflict early. What HR did next is now in federal court

A deacon says ExxonMobil punished his faith. The paper trail is now in federal court.

A Catholic deacon says ExxonMobil moved him to shift work that wrecked his church duties, then suspended him after his lawyer called.

Max Silva spent more than eight years as a day-shift trainer at ExxonMobil's Baytown complex. By his account, he reached what the complaint calls the company's highest training level, taught supervisors, and was scheduled to train staff in England and to develop training for a joint venture in Saudi Arabia. He was also pursuing a second calling. After a six-year program, he was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church on February 15, 2025.

The trouble, his complaint says, started the next month.

In March 2025, Silva began hearing he might be sent back to the refinery and to rotating shift work - days, nights, and weekends. That schedule, he says, would have made his church duties impossible. A deacon, the filing notes, serves at Mass and tends to parishioners in the evenings and on weekends.

What happened next is the part HR leaders will want to read closely.

Silva says he flagged the conflict early. He emailed Human Resources on April 23, 2025, noting that his day shift did not yet require an accommodation but that he wanted the company to know. On May 8, 2025, the filing says, he learned he would return to a shift-work role, and he told the Baytown Area HR manager the move would...

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