I understand what you’re implying and you’re right, but the stupidness of the question in the OP is much more inciting. Why the heck would it be illegal? “All you stupid Christians should be forbidden from doing anything at all related to your sect if the public is at all under the possibility of exposure.”
Chick-fil-A better darn well hope it isn’t illegal.
Good point. Let’s remember that even the SCOTUS opens its session with the crier announcing: “God save the United States and this honorable court.” Congress has a paid chaplain*, and the House opens each session with a prayer.
*paid to the tune of $138k/year
Whoa there…my question was not stupid. If a Christian was at work, and his boss and coworkers happened to be satanists, and they opened a business meeting with “And lets all just take time to Thank Holy Satan for His devine power over God and the evil Jesus Christ who is clearly responsible for all the evil in the world–everyone bow their heads!”
I am sure a Christian would feel somewhat uncomfortable, and question the legality.
And those Christians would be 100% wrong (about the legality). Not that I thought your quesiton was stupid. Surprising, perhaps, but not stupid. What would have made you think prayer at a corporate meeting would be illegal, if you don’t mind?
It is.
This article (pdf) addresses most of the issues.
This article discusses some cases:
(citation and footnote omitted; second paragraph begins a footnote to the first).
http://reason.com/9408/edit.vp.9408.shtml
http://www.eeoc.gov/types/religion.html
http://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/seymour_art_14_ethnic.pdf (pdf) (doesn’t discuss religious discrimination much, but the same principles apply).
Almost certainly ok to have a prayer at a public meeting. It’d be interesting, however, if employees were required to attend the meeting and join in prayer.
And religious organizations are specifically exempt from Title VII with respect to religion.
I felt justifiably discriminated against at this meeting, and I felt that others with a similar world view might have felt the same. It is reasonable to guess that my sense may be in fact associated with some legal precident…and according to the posts by G Factor, my intuition was correct. I certainly will keep those links for future reference, thanks G Factor!
This will hopefully change. It is impossible to determine what “required” really means here, as you may not officially be “required” but you may have a tougher time getting into the “inner sanctum” in some organizations. Of course, this also leads to the rights of corporations that exist for religious purposes, such as “Focus on the Family” or some “Christian University”, so its hard to say where to draw the line. In my example, the end product of the company was manufacturing and distribution, and actually in another similar case, a financial services organization that invokes a lot of religious symbolism and “testimony” in their official internal communications. Of course companies like “in-n-out burger” and chick fil et also might constitute a “hostile environment” for atheists or any religion other than Christianity, so this gets pretty sticky.
That is simply not what the Thirteenth Amendment says at all.
Amendment XIII makes slavery illegal in the United States. For anyone.
Your intution would only be correct if you had acquistion meetings every day of the year. Certainly that is not the case, is it? And note that the rulings said the prayers would have to be broadcast over the PA system, or that there had to be some compulsary participation. You didn’t say anything along those lines in your OP.
GFACTOR: So, can the House of Representatives be considered a hostile work environment since a prayer is read at the start of each session?
Religion can’t be used to excuse race discrimination. If you look at Title VII section 703(e):
Note that “race” is absent from the list of BFOQs. BSA may legally assert that its employees must have a belief in a supreme being because of its insistence that belief in a supreme being is a BFOQ but it may not make a similar assertion regarding race.
There is enough to assert that my question wasnt “stupid” It is ridiculous, I feel, to differentiate between daily prayers over a PA system and prayers from the “boss” at the compulsory employee meetings. This one I witnessed happened to be for a company I do not work for, but was a guest. I can only assume opening prayer is common practice for all of their meetings.
Sure they would. But in general you’re allowed to mix religion and business if you want. Too many people seem to be confusing “separation of church and state” in this country with “separation of church and all of society.” There’s some constitutional precedent for the former, and little logical, legal, or constitutional precedent for the latter.
Personally I think it’s bad form to mix religion and business, though. I own my company and I wouldn’t do it at a business meeting and certainly not a meeting with clients. If someone does it around me, I won’t care. I could care less if, in a meeting with a client the guy prays to Bob the Magnificent, I want his money and could care less what else he does. But, not everyone is so apathetic to such things as me, which is why I’d never risk the possibility of offending someone with a prayer. Would be bad for business.
In general the federal government is exempt from any work-place type laws.
Don’t Christains and Satanists basically beleive the same thing, just the side they choose to be on is different.
Interesting. This first case however just shows that a case was remanded to district court because the appellate court found that the plaintiff had sufficiently demonstrated that she was wrongfully terminated based on religion. It doesn’t say what the ultimate outcome of the legal action is. It also has nothing to do with prayer in the workplace but rather being terminated based on religion, which is a different matter and one that would probably give most persons a strong case for wrongful termination in most districts in the U.S.
I question your including this at all. In this case the plaintiff files suit because he says a hostile work environment was created due to his fundamentalist Christian religious beliefs. He claims he resigned because of mounting pressure and adverse actions taken against him because of his beliefs, and he also makes the claim of “retaliatory action” taken by the company against him for filing a complaint through the personnel department.
The district court ruled in the defendant’s favor. The plaintiff appealed and the apellate court affirmed the district court’s decision. We have no idea if further legal action was taken. In their decision the appellate court makes it clear that just the simple claim that you feel discriminated against because of your religious beliefs doesn’t amount to enough to successfully sue your employer. They also note that since the employer took no retaliatory actions, or actions that would sufficiently meet the definition of “adverse actions” against the defendant his suit was without merit.
This article is equally damning to your claims if (I’m extrapolating here) you’re asserting that prayer in the work place could be illegal. That article mentions the case of Brown v. Polk County in which a management level employee (Brown) was forced to remove religious items and also chastised for allowing prayer in departmental meetings. The 8th Circuit Court found in favor of Brown, and said that the forced removal of the items was unconstitutional and it should also be noted the article explains you have a right to workplace religious expression under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Right’s Act as well as under the United States Constitution. The 8th Circuit Court further stated that the complaints about the prayers were “unreasonable.” What the court found important in ruling in Brown’s favor was the fact that there was no reasonable evidence that he was making employee decisions based in any way on religion. And that his occasional expressions of religious belief were an excercise of his fundamental rights and complaints about them were unreasonable.
Obviously the bar to establish “hostile work environment” seems to be set pretty high. And in this article it suggests that a prayer during a departmental-level meeting doesn’t meet that standard.
I should have mentioned it before this point, but what this article affirms is that “hostile work environment” based on religion is not based on sexual harassment law as the OP originally claimed. It is based on the 1964 Civil Rights act and harassment based on religious creed is an independent part of that act separate from harassment based on race or sex.
In the Townley case mentioned in the article it is found that an employer may not require mandatory attendance at faith-based seminars and meetings of non-religious employees. In the original decision the court struck down the practice entirely, however the appellate court amended that and said that the employer COULD require attendance at such faith-based meetings but had to excuse anyone who wished to be excused based on religious reasons.
So obviously once you begin to approach mandatory matters the court will start to rule against the employer.
The quote here concerning the broadcasts of prayers is actually the exact same case that is discussed in your previous link, so it is a bit superfluous to have included this second article on the matter.
What is of interest though is the first article you linked doesn’t make the claims that the decision in Hilsman v Runyon would necessarily be precisely the same had that case involved a private employer instead of the U.S. Postal Service. I’m guessing you decided to quote discussion of the Hilsman case from your second article instead of the first because the second article expounded on the case in an editorial manner supporting your assertions.
Also it appears that the Hilsman case was a decision made by an EEOC mediation body and not a court. Which means that while Hilsman would represent the current policy within the EEOC, its decisions have not be challenged in a court and thus the matter is not definitively settled in a judicial manner.
I feel like a dope now. After reading this article it became apparent to me you did not read the earlier articles you posted, at least you did not read them sufficiently.
This link talks about proposed EEOC regulations and the author is obviously writing in an opinion piece about things she thinks could happen. If you had read the Kaminer article you linked above you would note that it explains what happened to these proposed EEOC guidelines. They were met with the greatest public outcry and public opposition in the history of the EEOC. And the EEOC decided not to impose the guidelines because it recognized the tempest it would be creating in doing so.
This article of the EEOC guidelines is redundant as it covers things already explained in (at times) multiple links you have already presented.
Certainly not true. Again, if you had read the Kaminer article that you linked for us you’d see that in general the courts have 1) not ruled near extensively on religious discrimination as they have other forms of discrimination (none of the court cases we’ve talked about here have involved the SCOTUS, and only two SCOTUS cases that have meaningfully decided issues about workplace religious discrimination exist) and 2) the courts at all levels do not treat religious discrimination the same as other forms of discrimination.
The case law would suggest it is okay. But it would also suggest that it’s something that has to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and furthermore it’s a matter nowhere near being “settled law.”
The last time I read about the “Church of Satan” as founded by Anton LaVey [sp?] Satanists don’t believe in God. Or the devil.
It’s more like a belief system centering on acquiring knowledge and working towards your own self-interest.
I think that’s what you get with adult Satanists.
Then you have mentally ill teenagers, but they’re a different category altogether.
Off OP but kinda related. At the company I used to work for the Owner would send Christmas letters to all employees, evoking Jesus and good will. This Owner was a large contributor to the creation of the well-known-in-this-area 3-Cross Neighborhood Church. I always took slight offense at the content of the letters and thought the intent was clear. GET RELIGION peaons.
This Owner also sent a letter to all employees once after a national disaster, saying the company was soliciting donations for said disaster. It was also stated in the letter that the company would keep a list of people that had contributed. Damned if I didn’t write a check, though I otherwise might not have. I don’t think that employer’s should have the right to intimidate their employees with the ruse of religion or “that list” they were going to compile.
I had a coworker at said company who once brought in a religious based inspirational CD to play at her workstation not three feet from me. I complained. I believed that I had the right to not have religion forced down my throat at my place of work. I actually thought that was law. It’s not? Wow, was I out-of-line?
Out of line, well maybe or not, it looks like a sticky one to me. I don’t think you are out of line asking your coworker to please not do X because it is distracting, annoying to me. But it really needs to be generic.
It’s something to be decided on a case-by-case basis. If management sees fit to stop someone from playing religious music based on workplace decorum matters, that’s typically fine. Management can say whether or not you’re allowed to play music aloud at work. However it can’t base that decision on the religiosity of the music because the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act have affirmed that employees have a constitutionally protected right to express their religious feelings, even at the workplace.
While the courts have restricted the rights, to a degree, of the employer or management to express religion it is loathe to restrict religious expression for employees. And in general the courts are a bit stricter on management because management’s actions are seen as having a greater probability of being coercive in nature.
For you personally to ask someone to turn off music isn’t out of line as long as you’re not breaking societal rules of politeness or workplace standards of decent behavior.
There’s certainly not a thing making it illegal to play religious music at the workplace though.
Use common sense, if it’s “forcing religion down your throat” and against the law to hear religious music, then what next? Should it be against the law for carolers to sing on public streets? For people to put up religious decorations on their homes that you can see from your home? In general freedom of expression (religious or otherwise) isn’t legally restrictable just because you don’t like it.