Religious Speech

If some complainants make these claims, some fact-finders may well agree.  A state court has in fact found that it was religious harassment for an employer to put religious articles in its employee newsletter and Christian-themed verses on its paychecks. 26

The EEOC likewise found that a claim that an employer “permitted the daily broadcast of prayers over the public address system” over the span of a year was “sufficient to allege the existence of a hostile working environment predicated on religious discrimination.” 27 A recent article by two employment lawyers gives “repeated, unwanted ‘preaching´ episodes [by a fundamentalist Christian employee] that offend coworkers and adversely affect their working conditions” as a “bright-line example” of actionable harassment; an employer in such a situation would be “well advised to take swift remedial action.” 28

If polite religious proselytizing can be harassment, then of course harsher criticism of religion would be, too.  In the EEOC’s words, “disparag[ing] the religion or beliefs of others” in the workplace may be illegal; “a Christian employee would have recourse under Title VII if a ‘secular humanist´ employer” — or presumably secular humanist coworkers — “engaged in a pattern of ridiculing the employee’s religious beliefs.´” 29

A state administrative agency has found that an employee was religiously harassed by a Seventh Day Adventist coworker who often talked about religion to everyone.  There was no allegation that the coworker used any religious slurs, though he did “[make] negative comments to [plaintiff] about her Lutheran faith,” did “criticize (and try to change) [plaintiff’s] personal life style,” and did “depress[plaintiff] a great deal” with what plaintiff saw as “Seventh Day Adventism’s ‘pessimistic doomsday´ outlook.”  Likewise, a federal district court has held that a pattern of religiously themed comments, which mostly consisted of statements that the target was a sinner and had to repent, and didn’t include any religious slurs, could be religious harassment. 30

–Excerpted with permission by author: Prof. Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School