What are the limits of religious freedom in the workplace? Federally in the US, only race, sex, and religion are protected classes, i.e. it's illegal to make employment decisions (hiring/firing/salary/promotion/etc.) on the basis of a worker's race, sex, or religion. Let's say that I have a Christian employee, Joe, who verbally harasses a gay employee, Steve. Joe is confronted by management or HR about his behavior, but he defends himself by saying that he is a devout Christian and he is only attempting to save Steve's soul. (For the record, while I personally am a Christian, I don't think the workplace is the right place for these conversations.) What could the company do? Could they reprimand, or even fire, Joe for his harassment of Steve? Or would the company be required by federal law to keep Joe on staff even when he harasses other workers? I can think of an example involving only religion as well. If I saw another employee wearing a Satanic symbol I would be very offended. But Satanists have religious freedom too and are also protected by federal law. So who wins?
The EEOC web site has much information on this topic including summaries of close cases that have been decided in court. To determine whether allowing or continuing to permit an employee to pray, proselytize, or engage in other forms of religiously oriented expression in the workplace would pose an undue hardship, employers should consider the potential disruption, if any, that will be posed by permitting this expression of religious belief.[196] As explained below, relevant considerations may include the effect such expression has had, or can reasonably be expected to have, if permitted to continue, on co-workers, customers, or business operations. a. Effect on Workplace Rights of Co-Workers Expression can create undue hardship if it disrupts the work of other employees or constitutes – or threatens to constitute – unlawful harassment. Since an employer has a duty under Title VII to protect employees from religious harassment, it would be an undue hardship to accommodate such expression. As explained in § III-A-2-b of this document, religious expression directed toward co-workers might constitute harassment in some situations, for example where it is facially abusive (i.e., demeans people of other religions), or where, even if not abusive, it persists even though the co-workers to whom it is directed have made clear that it is unwelcome. It is necessary to make a case-by-case determination regarding whether the effect on co-workers actually is an undue hardship. However, this does not require waiting until the alleged harassment has become severe or pervasive.[197] As with harassment on any basis, it is permitted and advisable for employers to take action to stop alleged harassment before it becomes severe or pervasive, because while isolated incidents of harassment generally do not violate federal law, a pattern of such incidents may be unlawful.[198]
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not prohibit people with no affiliation with the government from trying to convert people to their religion in a way not endorsed by a government official or agency. It could be that there is some content neutral prohibition on strangers accosting young school children if that person is so persistent that it amounts to content neutral harassment, or that the person might actually be a sex offender prohibited from contacting children. But, the facts of the question don't seem to compel this conclusion. Even if it violates any law to do this, it is not a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
No. Absent some collective bargaining agreement to the contrary, you have no recourse because you have not been legally wronged. You have no right to privacy in this regard. You have no right to be free of humiliation based upon truthful statements. If the email is truthful and you were indeed suspended, then the manager is entirely appropriate in sharing that information, and indeed has a need to do so. You would have no recourse in Tennessee, even if your manager gave a national television interview on your suspension and truthfully stated all reasons for the suspension and threw in statements of opinion disparaging you. Humiliation is only actionable if it amounts to "outrageous conduct" beyond mere truthful speech (e.g. throwing your clothes in the toilet or secretly putting some self-disparaging statement on the back of your uniform) and was calculated with a specific intent to cause you extraordinary emotional harm that was not necessary for some legitimate purpose.
It is not legal for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sex anywhere in the US (see http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm). Exemptions exist where the discrimination is for bona fide occupational qualifications and, irrelevantly, religious reasons. It is completely legal for a consumer to discriminate on the basis of anything they want to. It is also legal for a business to assist the consumer in that discrimination. Bona fide occupational qualifications generally only apply to instances in which the BFOQ is considered reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a particular business. Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defence, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co.. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ—for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided." None of the occupations you mention would, on the face of it, meet the requirements to be BFOQ. Allowing their customers to express a preference for a specific gender may impact on the capacity for the business to deliver on that preference but it would not generally allow a BFOQ defence if this impacted their hiring policies. A possible exception is if the business catered to that preference exclusively, for example, an all female gym with all female staff but I am not aware that this has ever been tested and if a male personal trainer wanted to take them on he may very well win. As an aside, there is no BFOQ defence for racial discrimination except for artistic works where the first amendment rights overrule the anti-discrimination laws.
Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms. I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased the reason they couldn't talk about it poorly. The reason they were restricted from giving you an answer could be a legality, but not necessarily because they are giving you legal advice.
&quot;Discrimination&quot; is in some way treating people differently from other people. Much discrimination is a sound idea. Not letting someone fly a plane who does not have pilot training is discrimination, but not a bad kind. So is not allowing someone to do surgery who has not trained as a doctor. Unlawful discrimination is discrimination that a particular law in a particular country declares to be forbidden. Different countries have different laws for what kinds of discrimination is unlawful under what circumstances. Discrimination on a basis not forbidden by law is legal, even if immoral. For example, a restaurant could, in most if not all countries, ban left-handed people from being served there. This might be immoral, but would not be illegal, because no law has made it illegal. Commonly, discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, national origin, sex, or political opinion is unlawful. In some jurisdictions discrimination on the basis of disability is unlawful. Other bases may be unlawful in some places. There may be exceptions. Employment discrimination may not have the same standards as housing discrimination, and admission to public places or ability to run for public office may be different yet. All this will vary based on the particular laws of particular places. Note that some of these protected classes are things about which people have no choice, such as sex and national origin, others are matters of choice such as religion and political opinion. Laws may create a protected class on any basis. Note also that many things about which people have little or no choice, such as height, handedness, or intelligence, are not protected categories in most places. To the best of my understanding being vaccinated or not is not a protected class in most if not all of Europe, so legal distinctions may be made based on vaccination status. In such jurisdictions, discrimination in favor of those who are vaccinated is legal, although some may think it wrong. A few US states have made it unlawful to restrict various public or private services or access to places on the basis of vaccination status. I am not aware of any country in Europe that has such a law.
Like the other rights in the First Amendment, religious freedom is not absolute. For example, you can't use religious freedom to get away with assault or murder (e.g. fulfilling the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie). The basis of many anti-abortion laws is that the fetus is a person, and thus abortion is murder. So by the same logic that you can't kill a person out of the womb for religious reasons, you wouldn't be allowed to kill an unborn person. So whether the Satanic Temple is a real religion or a parody is moot, because religion cannot be used to justify murder. The RFRA doesn't get around this. It has the following exception: the government may burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) furthers a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. What falls under &quot;compelling government interest&quot; is up to the courts to decide. But in the past they've determined that paying taxes is a compelling government interest (Adams v. Commissioner), and even that getting a social security number is not a significant burden (Miller v. Commissioner). So it seems likely to me that actions that directly harm another person would not be allowed. The basis of most anti-abortion laws is that the fetus is a person, deserving of human rights, and abortion deprives them of the right to life. It's hard for me to imagine that preventing this would not be considered a compelling government interest in states that prohibit abortion. We can't be certain about this, since Roe v. Wade was only overturned very recently, and there's little precedent in how the anti-abortion laws that are now allowed will be interpreted in corner cases like this. But in the current political climate, I think it's almost certain that a question like this would be decided in the pro-life direction. While pro-life conservatives also tend to be pro-religion, they generally restrict this to Christian religious traditions (these same groups were in favor of Trump's Muslim travel bans). A fringe religion like TST would likely not receive favorable treatment. Because of this, perhaps the right place for a question like this would be Politics
This is an open question. California's Unruh Act prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of political affiliation. This same issue has come up previously, in a case where four neo-Nazis showed up wearing swastika pins at a German restaurant. When they refused to remove the pins, the restaurant called the police to remove them. The Nazis sued the restaurant under the Unruh Act, which prohibits various forms of discrimination in public accommodations (restaurants, hotels, etc.) Although the Unruh Act does not specifically mention discrimination on the basis of political ideology, the California Supreme Court has interpreted its list of classes as describing, not limiting, the classes eligible for protection, which it has also explicitly said include political affiliation: Whether the exclusionary policy rests on the alleged undesirable propensities of those of a particular race, nationality, occupation, political affiliation, or age, in this context the Unruh Act protects individuals from such arbitrary discrimination. Marina Point, Ltd. v. Wolfson, 30 Cal. 3d 721, 726 (1982). Based on these interpretations, the trial court refused to dismiss the Nazis' case against the restaurant, and the parties eventually settled without going to trial. Read commentary about the case here. So it seems clear that the Unruh Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of political affiliation. Because wearing a swastika indicates that you affiliate with the National Socialist German Workers' Party or one of its offshoots, the Unruh Act probably prohibits a business from discriminating against customers on the basis of wearing a swastika. But federal law may pre-empt the Unruh Act. But the problem doesn't end there, because intepreting the law that was creates potential conflicts with federal public-accommodations law, employment law, and the First Amendment. For instance, federal law prohibits the creation of a &quot;hostile environment&quot; in terms of both providing public accommodations on equal terms regardless of race, and in terms of equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Proving a hostile environment can be pretty difficult, but if you could demonstrate that allowing swastikas on premises created a hostile environment for customers or employees, you'd then have a strong Supremacy Clause argument that the Unruh Act can't be enforced to require the admission of swastika-wearing customers. Beyond that, businesses have First Amendment rights on generally the same terms as natural humans. There's a reasonable argument to be made that those businesses, in banning swastikas, are communicating a First Amendment-protected anti-Nazi message, or that they are exercising their right to control who speaks in the forum that they control. If the court were to accept either of those arguments, it would again mean that the Unruh Act probably could not be enforced to benefit those wearing swastikas.