They 100% win this. They didn't treat him differently because he's religious, they made him work despite being religious. That's perfectly legal in the US.
This is incorrect. This behavior is illegal according to title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is not enough to treat people “equally”, because it is trivially easy to come up with “equal” but discriminatory requirements. Instead, companies are required to reasonably accommodate the religious observations of their employees, unless there is some compelling reason otherwise.
Reasonable accommodation doesn't mean the day off and it certainly doesn't mean the day off without requesting it in advance.
To be clear, I'm not defending Yelp requiring people to be on email/phone 24/7, but his statement makes it very clear that he never made a request for this.
Should he have to? No it's a weekend. But legally they aren't required to. Had he requested, in advance, that he not be contacted on Sunday for religious observation you can bet that would absolutely be public. It'd be a slam dunk case.
So yes, it is perfectly legal to email someone on a religious holiday and expect an answer if they didn't request accommodations ahead of time. There's no court in the country that wouldn't call that unreasonable.
Nope, not a lawyer. But I do have the power of common sense. You can refrain from the snide comments if this is too be a productive conversation.
That request is literally the key to all of this. If they don't know he's observing a religious holiday how the hell can they be violating his rights here?
Pretty sure the guy knew of Easter in advance. And while working for Yelp sounds pretty horrible, if he didn't request the day off for religious reasons I find it hard to comprehend how the company is liable for that.
And for the sake of argument, I hope he did and Yelp ends up paying oodles of money for this. But I imagine that would have been very much spewing out of his lawyer's mouth if it were the case.
First of all, you can't trot out stuff like "I have the power of common sense" while complaining about snide comments.
As for due warning, they were informed of the religious observance at the time (and before Easter Sunday), and proceeded to straight up make policy on the spot that invalidated it and future religious celebrations.
I asked for your qualifications not to be hostile but because legal matters are often - for better and worse - more nuanced than most people's intuition, and I don't think you have adequately addressed either the legal specifics of what constitutes adequate notice, examined Yelp's response to the situation, or how any of this might look to a jury.
> First of all, you can't trot out stuff like "I have the power of common sense" while complaining about snide comments
Tit for tat.
> As for due warning, they were informed of the religious observance at the time (and before Easter Sunday), and proceeded to straight up make policy on the spot that invalidated it and future religious celebrations.
Yes, the the day before Easter, which he also took off as apparently Easter weekend is a holiday, not just the day.
> I asked for your qualifications not to be hostile but because legal matters are often - for better and worse - more nuanced than most people's intuition, and I don't think you have adequately addressed either the legal specifics of what constitutes adequate notice, examined Yelp's response to the situation, or how any of this might look to a jury.
You asked because it functioned as an ad hominem. You're part of this conversation, and haven't suggested you have any legal qualifications, which we can safely assume it means you don't.
I don't need to address the legal specifics of what constitutes adequate notice, because I'm fairly confident "the day before" isn't going to qualify.
Have you read any case law on the matter? Reasonable accommodations doesn't even require that employers remove the conflict, they just need to accommodate it. The request for this "time off" was made the day he wanted to start taking said time off, for 2 days. Yelp had an "emergency" situation that obligated him be on-call.
Read the standard: "Unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business." Minimal burden. Furthermore, the EEOC defines what reasonable accommodations might look like:
"Examples of some common religious accommodations include flexible scheduling, voluntary shift substitutions or swaps, job reassignments, and modifications to workplace policies or practice"
How many of those can be implemented with no notice? None. The very idea that you and others think 0 days notice for religious accommodation is acceptable is so very confusing. The bar to show the request as unreasonable is exceptionally low. Almost anything can be considered more than a minor burden.
> You asked because it functioned as an ad hominem.
No, I asked because of your extreme certainty. Both in this thread and others, you repeatedly use language like "100%!", which I frankly think can only come from someone with deep domain expertise.
Unlike you, I and most others here are certainly not claiming to know beyond a shadow of doubt how a court might rule in this case (not least of which because we don't have all the facts of the case). If you're going to proclaim infallibility I think it's reasonable to have the qualifications to support it : you don't.
> "Preliminarily, we reject the defendants' argument that because Mr. Brown never explicitly asked for accommodation for his religious activities, he may not claim the protections of Title VII. An employer need have "only enough information about an employee's religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict between the employee's religious practices and the employer's job requirements." Heller v. EBB Auto Co., 8 F.3d 1433, 1439 (9th Cir. 1993). Because the first reprimand related directly to religious activities by Mr. Brown, we agree with the district court that the defendants were well aware of the potential for conflict between their expectations and Mr. Brown's religious activities."
I would draw your attention to this part :
> only enough information about an employee's religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict between the employee's religious practices and the employer's job requirements
This is of relevance here, because it seems pretty clear that the terminated manager was outspoken about his religious affiliation.
Also -
> "Religion" includes "all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that [it] is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee's . . . religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business."
Indicating much of the onus falls on the employer to demonstrate that accommodating religious beliefs presents an undue hardship. In this case, I think Yelp will have a hard time demonstrating that having delegation redundancy twice a year will constitute "undue hardship".
Moreover, it's not enough to merely speculate about the hardship - they [Yelp] have to actually prove it :
> [I]t is certainly conceivable that particular jobs may be completely incompatible with particular religious practices. It would be unfair to require employers faced with such irreconcilable conflicts to attempt futilely to resolve them. Employers faced with such conflicts should be able to meet their burden by showing that no accommodation is possible.
> Although conceivable, such situations will also be rare. We therefore will be "skeptical of hypothetical hardships." [citation omitted] "The employer is on stronger ground when he has attempted various methods of accommodation and can point to hardships that actually resulted."
Clearly, no methods of accommodation have been attempted in this case, since there are quite literally no major religious Christian holidays between easter and June (when the employee in question was eventually terminated)
So in summary, it can fairly be argued that the employer had sufficient contextual knowledge of the employee's religious affiliation to not force them to work on his religion's major holiday, undermining the notion that advance notice is a hard prerequisite to providing accommodation. Yelp will also need to demonstrate that said accommodations (of which there were none) would constitute a non-hypothetical undue hardship (which will be difficult to demonstrate, since no attempts were ever made).
Moreover, Yelp has dug themselves into a complete mess if the communication chain contains lots of juicy tidbits like "I don't care about your religion or children", in addition to establishing a policy of zero-religious-exception as a response to a request for religious accommodation. At that point, they're going to have a tough time falling back on the defense of inadequate notice (which, as shown above, is far from a given), since their response demonstrates precisely 0.0 willingness to even entertain the notion of accommodation.
"Your honor, if we had more time to prepare to give him the middle finger, we would have given him both hands... I mean... wait..."
> No, I asked because of your extreme certainty. Both in this thread and others, you repeatedly use language like "100%!", which I frankly think can only come from someone with deep domain expertise.
I can be both absolutely certain and absolutely wrong. That doesn't obligate domain knowledge of any sort.
> Unlike you, I and most others here are certainly not claiming to know beyond a shadow of doubt how a court might rule in this case (not least of which because we don't have all the facts of the case). If you're going to proclaim infallibility I think it's reasonable to have the qualifications to support it : you don't.
Where did I claim infallibility? And how about you stop with the Ad hominems? They are weak. Again, I'm not arguing that I'm infallible, I'm just absolutely certain that there is no reasonable court or jury that would consider a same-day request a reasonable request.
> This is of relevance here, because it seems pretty clear that the terminated manager was outspoken about his religious affiliation.
There is absolutely zero evidence that he was outspoken about his religious affiliation outside of the day he mentioned it, which was also the day he requested it.
And you are drawing an absurd conclusion from that statement. Information about an employee's religious needs is not the same as information about an employee's religious affiliation. Saying your Christian is not enough to automatically get Easter off.
> Indicating much of the onus falls on the employer to demonstrate that accommodating religious beliefs presents an undue hardship.
Finally we agree on something. It's absolutely up to the employer to prove that the request was an undue burden.
> In this case, I think Yelp will have a hard time demonstrating that having delegation redundancy twice a year will constitute "undue hardship".
They don't have to. They only have to prove (A) that a request wasn't made until the day of, thus the undue hardship came from having no time to "fill" this employees duties. The premise of my argument is that if Yelp received zero notice outside of the same day he wanted to start a 2 day religious observance, no court is going to consider the request reasonable.
Obviously, if he had said this well in advance then Yelp is screwed. But I can't fathom why his attorney wouldn't clearly indicate that's the case in his statement. It would make this almost obvious.
> Clearly, no methods of accommodation have been attempted in this case
Stop with the straw men. My argument isn't that Yelp attempted to accommodate, it's that his request came with zero notice, thus wasn't a reasonable request.
> So in summary, it can fairly be argued that the employer had sufficient contextual knowledge of the employee's religious affiliation to not force them to work on his religion's major holiday
I'm going to highlight this part, because you are jumping to an enormous conclusion that's just objectively wrong.
> only enough information about an employee's religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict between the employee's religious practices and the employer's job requirements
Religious needs. This case set case law that employees need not use magic words to request specific religious holidays off, but in no way can this be interpreted to mean anyone simply saying they are Christian is not specifying religious needs it's specifying affiliation.
> undermining the notion that advance notice is a hard prerequisite to providing accommodation.
By your logic simply telling someone in passing that you are going to Church means a business is now required, without notice, to give you every Sunday off. It's absolutely ludicrous.
> Yelp will also need to demonstrate that said accommodations (of which there were none) would constitute a non-hypothetical undue hardship (which will be difficult to demonstrate, since no attempts were ever made).
Of course, your summary relies on a serious misinterpretation of the difference between "religious needs" and "religious affiliation". Feel free to support your argument with case law, stating unequivocally, that simply knowing someone's religious affiliation is enough to accommodate them on all religious holidays that particular religion.
By your logic, the company being aware of his religious affiliation would also obligate them to give him Pentecost off, right?
How about if someone mentions in passing they are Muslim. Do they get to let the business know, the same day, that they need Laylat al-Qadr off? Is the business responsible for accommodating that because "they knew his religious affiliation".
Your entire argument hinges on three absurd theories:
1) He made it clear, in advance, what his religious affiliation is.
2) Knowing the religious affiliation of an employee is enough to obligate the business to provide "reasonable accommodations".
3) "Reasonable accommodations" includes giving all religious holidays off up to and including those requested the same day of the holiday itself.
I'm in no way defending that manager or Yelp. But if any of your assumptions were true there would be mountains of case law supporting these law suits. There aren't.
Everything you've said thus far ignores the "reasonable" part of "reasonable accommodation". There is nothing reasonable, on its face, about requesting two days off for religious reasons, on the same day those two days start. That's the only argument I'm making. And within the boundaries of that argument, I can't find a single case in which a same-day request for religious observance has ever even been filed let alone ruled in favor of. Can you?
> Feel free to support your argument with case law, stating unequivocally, that simply knowing someone's religious affiliation is enough to accommodate them on all religious holidays that particular religion.
> I can't find a single case in which a same-day request for religious observance has ever even been filed
Narrow goal posts much? I had my doubts, but I am now confident you are not having a discussion in good faith. We're done here.
Are you saving it for later? (I joke, but your "common sense" assertion seems like a total non-sequitur to me.)
> If they don't know he's observing a religious holiday how the hell can they be violating his rights here?
He told them, it's right there in the lawsuit.
> And while working for Yelp sounds pretty horrible, if he didn't request the day off for religious reasons I find it hard to comprehend how the company is liable for that.
He had the day off to begin with. Normally you don't have to work during "time off". The company is liable because they fired him rather than make reasonable accommodations as required by law. This is spelled out rather clearly in the lawsuit.
> Are you saving it for later? (I joke, but your "common sense" assertion seems like a total non-sequitur to me.)
Hilarious.
> He told them, it's right there in the lawsuit.
No, he told them after they attempted to contact him. That's not requesting in advance.
> He had the day off to begin with
Clearly he didn't. Even he says all this managers employees were emailed with the expectation they'd be available via email on weekends. That's horrible and a place I'd never work. But that's not illegal.
> Normally you don't have to work during "time off".
It's not "time off" if they obligate people to be available. It's permanent on-call.
> The company is liable because they fired him rather than make reasonable accommodations as required by law.
And their argument is going to be he didn't request reasonable accommodations because they weren't requested in a reasonable time frame. If he had a request a week in advance this wouldn't even be conversation.
If there's anybody who would be freaking out about someone not answering emails on Easter, or Christmas, or whatever, it's a lawyer, in my experience :)
