Many of the employment laws that affect our daily lives are of recent provenance, so recent that the oldest members of today’s workforce can remember a time before they existed. Yes, the laws about minimum wages go back to the Great Depression, so they have been around since before any of today’s workers were born. Not only did the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 establish minimum wages, but it also restricted the employment of minors and established protections against excessive work hours, setting the stage for today’s laws about overtime pay.
Laws against discrimination based on race and other protected characteristics trace their origins ultimately to the Civil Rights Act of 1964; when you learn about this law in school, it is usually in the context of prohibiting racial segregation in schools and other public places, but it also had wide-ranging implications for the workplace. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went into effect in 1990. When you consider the variety of health conditions recognized today as disabilities and the vast scope of accommodations that employers can make to facilitate the workforce participation of people with disabilities, it is striking how different the workplace and the economy would be without the ADA. Meanwhile, the right to freedom of religion goes all the way back to the First Amendment to the Constitution, long before the economy of the United States became industrialized.
Even though freedom of religion has been a fundamental part of the American experience for many generations, more than our workaholic culture and its dissenting voices have, some employees still experience discrimination based on their religion or their lack of religious affiliation. The Boulder religious discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if you have experienced religious discrimination in the workplace.
Colorado Religious Discrimination Lawyer
Federal and state laws prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on their religion. The main legal basis for this prohibition is not the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but rather the concept of protected characteristics. If an employer takes an adverse action against an employee based on a protected characteristic of the employee, this counts as employment discrimination. Adverse actions include negative performance reviews, denial of promotions, and termination of employment, as well as general uncollegial behavior meant to make the employee feel uncomfortable and unwelcome at work; this uncollegial behavior is known as a hostile work environment. Employment discrimination protections also apply to job candidates who have not yet been hired, too. Refusing to hire a job candidate based on a protected characteristic also qualifies as employment discrimination.
The category of protected characteristics includes a wide range of personal traits and aspects of a person’s life history. In addition to religion, other protected characteristics include race, age, disability, sex, veteran status, and sexual orientation. The protected category of religion is more complicated than it seems. Not all religious discrimination cases involve an employee who practices one of the world’s major religions (such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism) experiencing unfair treatment at a workplace where most of the employees practice a different religion. For example, some religious discrimination cases involve coworkers who belong to different sects or denominations of the same religion. For example, a hostile work environment might result from tension between Catholic and Evangelical Christian coworkers or Sunni and Shia Muslim coworkers. Colorado law does not recognize caste as a protected characteristic, but Hindu employees who are treated unfairly by their Hindu coworkers because of their caste may cite religious discrimination in an employment discrimination complaint.
It is also religious discrimination if you and your work supervisors or coworkers align in your religious affiliation, but they mistreat you because they consider you insufficiently religious, or if they consider you too religious. For example, a workplace where the Muslim women who wear headscarves and the Muslim women who do not wear them openly antagonize each other would count as a hostile work environment. It is also religious discrimination if your boss, who belongs to the same religion as you, fires you after you enter an interfaith marriage. You can even cite religious discrimination if you are an atheist or agnostic and your coworkers mistreat you because of this.
What if the Organization That Employs You Has a Religious Affiliation?
The rules are slightly different when the employer is a religious institution or has a religious affiliation. It only makes sense that you cannot be a pastor of a Baptist church unless you are a Baptist and that you cannot be a rabbi unless you are Jewish. Many schools with religious affiliations are open to hiring employees who do not belong to the organization’s sect or denomination; for example, it might count as religious discrimination if you applied for a job teaching at a Catholic school, but the school did not hire you because you are not Catholic. Likewise, schools with a religious affiliation may set codes of conduct whereby employees who belong to the organization’s denomination must attend religious services and abide by its rules about diet and dress, for example, and it may impose a different set of rules for non-adherents of the denomination. For example, they may be exempt from attending religious services, but they may be required to dress modestly and avoid criticizing the doctrines or practices of the employer’s denomination while they are at work or acting in their capacity as employees.
How to Get Justice After Experiencing Religious Discrimination at Work
If you experience religious discrimination at work, the first step is to communicate with a Boulder employment discrimination lawyer. Your lawyer can guide you through the process of requesting an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Only after the EEOC finishes its investigation and authorizes your complaint can you file a lawsuit in court.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, About Religious Discrimination
The Boulder employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, can counsel you about religious discrimination claims. Contact the employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP in Boulder, Colorado, to set up a consultation.
