Is this illegal? Discrimination based on religious beliefs.

Factual Questions
1

So there’s this guy I work with who’s in the manager training program. He’s done with the training and it’s time for him to get promoted to really being a manager. And the district manager won’t do it because the guy won’t work Sundays. He won’t work Sundays because he’s a born-again Christian and he goes to church that day.

Something smells bad about the situation to me. I think it’s definitely immoral to deny him the job for that reason, especially given that in practice, the general manager of our store never works weekends, and in a store that has 3 managers (as all of them do) having one guy who doesn’t work Sundays isn’t going to cripple anybody. But is this illegal?

2

Generally it is illegal to discriminate against someone because of religion. However, it is legal if the job requires doing something that a person will not do because of his religion. As another example, if a particular job required working on Saturdays, it would be legal to deny an orthodox Jew that position. So if the store can prove that working Sundays is necessary for the job, then it is free to discriminate against someone who refuses to work that day.

3

Thanks for the information, friedo. There’s probably nothing we can do to help him out, in that case. Fooey.

4

It places too much of a burden on the company and coworkers, it’s ok not to promote the guy.

I don’t think anything is wrong with the compnay decision.

5

But he knew he’d have to work Sunday’s before entering the training program, right? Or maybe not?

6

Well, Bongmaster, he’s never worked on Sundays this entire time. All through the training program it’s been just fine for him not work on Sundays. It’s just that now, they’ve decided not to promote him because of it.

7

IINAL, but I think your friend might actually have a case, if there are managers who rarely or never work on weekends. If he can show that in court, he could make a case that the “must be able to work on Sundays” catch was created solely to prevent him from qualifying because of his religious beliefs.

On the other hand, if he does file suit, he will probably earn a reputation of being a “troublemaker”, deserved or not, which might make it impossible to continue working for the company, and might make it difficult to get hired elsewhere.

So filing suit, or even mentioning the possibility of doing so to management, would almost guarantee he won’t become a manager there.

But there might be more at work here. The district manager might have decided against promoting your coworker for some reason other than religion. Maybe he thinks that your friend won’t work well with the other managers, but just made up the excuse he gave to avoid looking like he was setting up a good-old-boys clique. Or maybe your friend hasn’t brown-nosed enough. Or it could be something else entirely.

Does your coworker have a good relationship with one or more of the current managers? If so, maybe he could talk to them about what’s going on. They might have more information about the situation. If enough of the managers think the district manager is being a jerk, there’s the possibility of going over the d.m.'s head. But without some support from lower management, going over the d.m.'s head would probably bring nothing good.

So, in my ever-so-humble opinion, your coworker should talk to a Real Lawyer about the situation, and should figure out what he really wants. Does he just want the district manager to change his mind? Does he want to prove a point?

Of course, there’s always the ultimate revenge: quit, get a management job at the competitors, and go a good enough job to pull customers away from his current employer.