Federal appeals court says one supervisor's reply to a Ramadan request could be enough
A single remark about Ramadan revived a fired federal economist's discrimination case - and put supervisor accommodation responses back in HR's spotlight.
A US appeals court has given Farah Naz, a former Department of Energy economist, another shot at her religious discrimination case against the agency. On June 9, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated a lower court's dismissal of her Title VII discrimination claims and sent the case back for further proceedings. It upheld dismissal of her retaliation claim.
Naz, a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, worked as an economist in the Department's Office of Energy Consumption and Efficiency Analysis from January 2017 until her firing in January 2021. She sued the Department pro se in June 2022, alleging discrimination based on race, gender, sex, religion and national origin, plus retaliation.
She traces her trouble at work to April 2018, several months after she testified in support of a colleague's EEO complaint against her then-supervisor, Kelly Perl. According to her complaint, Perl turned hostile and told her "non-native people" like her often "have difficulty writing" and asked whether she had "attended school in the United States." Naz filed her own EEO complaint against Perl in late 2018, after being placed on a 90-day performance plan.
In March 2019, Peter Gross took over as her supervisor. Naz...
ABU DHABI: The Public Prosecution has expanded investigation into the publication and circulation of a false report claiming explosions heard in central Dubai. Counsellor Dr Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, ...