Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing and development.

Still, we, here at Miletti Law®, feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, in order to achieve this goal, and as part of our continued commitment to you, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy & distinctive content, which is featured as videos that are posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seems right that we, here at Miletti Law®, continue updating our series with new, verifiable, and credible content, which looks to not only educate, but also deliver in a sense that only Miletti Law® can. In that spirit, this blog is Part VI of our series on “Religious Accommodation Requirements.” Having exhausted what the law says about the duty of the employer and employee/applicant to engage in the “Interactive Process” in Part V, we ask you to join and take a step back with us, as we explore a key question into understanding more about accommodation in this series. We have been, since Part I of this series, talking about the obligation of the employer to provide the employee or applicant with a reasonable accommodation. The question is “What exactly is a Reasonable Accommodation?” How does the law define reasonable accommodation?

Defining Reasonable Accommodation

In simple terms, a “reasonable accommodation” entails an accommodation under which the conflict between a person’s religious practices and/or beliefs, and the employer’s requirements is eliminated. All employees should understand that as provided for under Title VII, the only obligation of the employer is to eliminate the conflict with a person’s religious beliefs and not satisfy all of the person’s requests. In the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that since any reasonable accommodation by the employer is sufficient to meet the employer’s accommodation obligation, the employer is not obligated by Title VII to grant the particular accommodation requests that the employee seeks. However, the accommodation offered should eliminate the conflict between a person’s religious practices and/or beliefs and the employment’s requirements, which means it should be “reasonable.”

This implies that if a full accommodation would not pose an undue hardship and the one provided only eliminates part of the conflict, then the proposed accommodation is not reasonable. For instance, Title VII’s definition and provision of what a reasonable accommodation should constitute of will not be met is the employer only offers to avoid scheduling the individual for Saturday (but not Friday night) shifts, whereas working from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday is prohibited by the employee’s religious beliefs. Further, if a person is required to accept a loss of benefits or reduction in pay, but an alternative accommodation where the individual is not required to do so exists, then the accommodation is not reasonable as well.

Examples of Reasonable Accommodation

Depending on individual requests, reasonable accommodation include, but not limited to:

  • Lateral transfer or change of job assignments
  • Voluntary substitutes or shift changes
  • Providing space to pray
  • Flexible scheduling
  • Exceptions to uniform requirements or dress codes
  • Payment of union dues to charitable organization

In a nutshell, the question whether a proposed accommodation is reasonable or not is a fact-specific issue and employers should understand that a case-by-case basis should be utilized when approaching individual requests for religious accommodation. Because Americans enjoy and are entitled to religious liberties, which are well protected by the law, employers only invite potential failure to accommodate claims if they refuse to consider certain types of accommodations as a matter of firm policy or adopt policies that do not provide for flexibility.

In Part VII of this series, we will explore what constitutes an “Undue Hardship” and what the labor law says about it. Until then, stay tuned for more guidance and counsel, and strive to be #UnusuallyMotivated. In the interim, reach us out at the Contact Us page for answers to your questions and/or comments and business legal representation.

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.