![]() The guidance permits employers to ask for additional information if they have an objective basis for questioning the sincerity of a particular belief. It was updated with an addendum following Groff to incorporate the new higher bar for employers. ![]() The EEOC’s 2020 Covid-19 vaccine guidance on workplace bias issues says that an employer must provide a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs that prevent a worker from receiving the vaccine under Title VII. The high court also addressed the EEOC’s current guidance on religious accommodations, and said that it likely wouldn’t be affected by the decision. The EEOC declined to comment on current or future litigation. “I think the regulatory bodies such as the EEOC are now enforcing the law of the land in its new form,” said Aaron Holt, an employer-focused attorney at Cozen O’Connor P.C. While avoiding a wholesale change to the standard to match the employer burden under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ruling is still expected to change the way courts have interpreted company obligations for decades. An employer must now show “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business” before denying an accommodation, the court said. DeJoy the Supreme Court decided that the “undue hardship” standard that employers must meet to deny a reasonable religious accommodation request under Title VII means more than “de minimis” hardship. ![]() It saw a dramatic increase in religious charges in the 2022 fiscal year, with 13,814 charges compared to the 2,111 charges filed in FY2021, prompted largely by an uptick in vaccine-related religious charges. The agency appears to have plenty of relevant complaints from workers. “It is definitely at the forefront of the EEOC’s agenda right now.” “It does signal that the EEOC is going to be taking a stronger approach to denials of religious accommodation requests post- Groff than perhaps they were doing before,” said Tracey Diamond, an employer-side labor and employment attorney at Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP. This higher bar for employers gives EEOC a greater likelihood of succeeding in these claims, according to employment attorneys and legal scholars. DeJoy decision in June, an employer must now demonstrate “substantial increased costs” to their business to deny an employee’s religious accommodation request under Title VII. The agency claimed that both companies didn’t accommodate their employees’ sincerely held beliefs because they refused to let them opt out of the vaccines.įollowing the Supreme Court’s Groff v. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week filed a pair of lawsuits under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act against Hank’s Furniture and United Healthcare Services Inc. The EEOC’s first-ever lawsuits filed against companies over failure to grant employee religious exemptions to Covid-19 vaccine policies signal the commission may be ready to bring many more such cases now that a US Supreme Court decision has eased their path.
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