Cab regulation and supply is local, so it varies considerably. But I see your point, a locality could pass a law that requires cabbies to serve all fares that pose no threat. If it’s an issue in your locality, take it to your local government. Here in NC, being a cabbie is not lucrative at all, so AFAIK the limiting factor is people willing to drive cabs, not government permits. A law requiring cabbies to tranport people and things they don’t want to would probably lower the supply of cabs. Other places, like NYC and DC, have a different market and the law might not reduce supply much. Remember to think like the business owner, not just the passenger. When should government be telling business owners what they can and can’t do?
Public accommodation laws against discrimination are based on legally protected characteristics–race, sex, religion, disability. Private business owners generally reserve the right to refuse service. As long as it’s not based on a protected characteristic, not a legal problem. Thus, a seeing eye dog must be accommodated, but Paris Hilton’s chihuahua need not be. If male Muslim cab drivers refused to transport women, that would probably also be a legal problem. If you were a Catholic priest transporting wine for Communion, maybe also a problem. Or a Sikh wearing the ceremonial knife they carry. But wanting wine, music, food and drink, etc. with you in the cab is not a protected right.
In your case of the passenger with the wine, IMHO the market serves you better than government. Give your business to cabbies who serve you well. Save the laws for bigger deals. There is a difference between hardship and undue hardship.
The Target MBA becomes a problem for Target to the extent that customers complain. Target needs to accommodate their employee to the extent that it doesn’t create undue hardship on the company. Dealing with repeated customer complaints and reduced revenues from lost sales would be pretty easy to argue as undue hardship, and eventually Target could fire that employee if he didn’t change his behavior. OTOH, if customers never even noticed that that Target (or that particular Target) did not have pork products on the shelves, Target has no reason to seek this person out and preemptively fire him. If he happens to be managing a Target in a heavily Jewish, Muslim and vegetarian area, maybe he is making a good business decision.
Unlike the pharmacist, the availability of pork products at a particular megamart does not have the importance of access to a medical treatment. Even if Target’s pharmacy were to be OK with the occasional lost business from prescriptions the pharmacist found objectionable, I would argue society has an interest in medical doctors being trusted to prescribe and have those prescriptions filled.
Couldn’t the ‘reasonable accommodation’ be moving that woman off cashier duty? Grocery stores also need customer service, shelf stockers, cleaners, people to man the seafood aisles, people to chop produce up into those fruit and vegetable trays, all sorts of jobs where coming into contact with pork products is small and easily avoided without inconveniencing the shopper.
I remember seeing somewhere in London a sign in front of a cashier’s desk asking customers buying alcohol to go to a different counter - the young woman working there was in a full jilbab. I can’t remember how it was phrased, but it did manage to come across as polite and also avoided being patronising towards the cashier. And certainly looked fairly official, i.e. not just a scrawled note or anything. (My memory says it was in Boots at Liverpool St, but do they sell booze?)
No such law exists here, but yes, I would feel this way. It’s needlessly inconvenient, it’s an imposition on my time, the clerk’s time, the time of the people waiting in line behind me and the time of the people waiting in line with the clerk who gets called over. Furthermore, it’s an insultingly patronizing nanny-state non-solution to underage drinking that accomplishes nothing other than putting on a display of “something being done.” Truthfully, I’d be more annoyed at this than with a clerk who had an actual problem with ringing up my purchase.
New York City does in fact have such a law regarding service animals, but there the cabs are highly regulated. They cannot, for example, refuse a passenger because of their destination, and this includes cases where the refusal makes perfect business sense: the fare is too small or takes them to an area where they won’t find pick up another fare. As I understand it, the logic is more or less as DanBlather said, that taxis are a public accommodation, and seen as more of a necessity than a luxury.
Yes, generally a transfer like that could be a reasonable accommodation, although some of the positions you list require different skills and might not be practical. Also, stocking usually requires night shifts, and an employer would have a hard time defending moving someone to night shift in a case like this. But your line of thinking is fine–if the store can work out a transfer that’s one approach to consider. If the store doesn’t get many customer complaints about the occasional pork purchase inconvenience, though, they would probably prefer to keep an experienced cashier as cashier. Reasonable accommodations situations for religion or disability are almost always a case-by-case thing, not blanket policies.
Turek’s post was responding to mine, and my point was that “we” (as in society) are not allowing religious beliefs to influence workplace prohibitions. My point of view is that this is a free market issue between employer and employee. From that standpoint, it doesn’t even have to be a religious restriction…it can be anything. For instance, one person may not want to sell cigarettes, another one may not want to sell any kind of meat. Both of these can be based on moral values that have nothing to do with religion. The point is not whether we as a society think the workplace prohibition is worthwhile, it’s whether the employer thinks it’s reasonable. If it inconveniences the employer or the employer’s customers enough, then they won’t go for it. What I don’t think is that there should be a law that the employer MUST accomodate the employee.
I don’t, since the store has no control over what state liquor laws require. And unless I’m at an actual self-check (which I loath, I used to “supervise” them) I don’t scan my own purchases.
I just want to tell you how much I enjoy reading your posts in threads like this one. Where many people are spouting off based on their gut instincts, or other principles which may shape their opinions, you generally come across as knowing the law, and the principles which shape it. I don’t always think that the principles which you describe should be the principles which apply, but I usually feel more knowledgable after reading your posts–unlike certain posters whose posts just leave me annoyed.
With respect to religious beliefs, though, there is such a law, and it’s pretty well entrenched. It keeps Christians from having to work on Sundays, Jews from having to work on their holy days, etc. It’s part of the same law that protects people from race and sex discrimination. Also, this is the same law that prevents a religious business owner from refusing to hire atheists. Obviously you don’t have to like all the laws in the country, and I sure don’t, but much of this thread is coming across like this is wide open for discussion, when it’s really pretty well settled. The odds of changing this law don’t look good, if Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists all rely on its protections.
You also asked about how do we distinguish a protected religious belief from just a random belief. Ultimately this decision gets made by the courts for each individual situation if the issue gets pressed enough. For example, an employer fires an employee and the employee sues for damages claiming religious discrimination. Things the courts would consider would be the history and breadth of the religion, and evidence that the individual in question actually practiced that religion. If it is just one person and their experience with the Church of Christ’s Image on Burnt Toast, a judge likely won’t find in their favor.
Nice post. Note that in MN, there are something like 1,100 Somalian cab drivers which make up a large fraction of the fleet. Thus for a person waiting in below 0 weather at the airport there may well be an undue hardship if all of the Somalians took a hard line.
If the nature of the business is such that accommodating their request to have that time off is an undue hardship, or if the company has fewer than the 15 employees for the law to apply, yes. So cashiers, where the store is open lots of varied hours and a typical store has many interchangeable cashiers, would generally need to be accommodated. Someone whose job is to make sure critical systems are running no matter when they might malfunction, they may not need to be accommodated. There is lots of gray area in the middle where the accommodation may or may not be reasonable.
I have been to Minnesota, and I know the weather is bad. But your alternative is not to freeze to death, it is to travel without the wine. Or, most likely, put the wine in your luggage. Surely the cabbies aren’t running their own security checkpoint?