February 8, 2007

In the NLJ, Michael Starr and Christine M. Wilson of Hogan & Hartson discuss increasing legal pressure to accommodate employees' religious beliefs, even at the cost of offending other employees or rewriting otherwise uniform corporate policies. As happens so often, employers can get sued either way:

When an employee's religiously based need to proselytize or affirmatively oppose sinfulness conflicts with an employer's diversity policies or is experienced as harassing by co-workers, employers that reflexively enforce their anti-harassment policies run the risk of liability for religious discrimination. Some effort to accommodate the employee's religious practice must be made.