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Ohio Religious Discrimination

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Ohio business has several Muslim employees who want to take breaks every day to pray.  Must I allow this?

You let other workers take smoke breaks. Some of your Christian employees may be studying the Bible during their breaks. Atheists may be drinking coffee and eating doughnuts during their coffee breaks. You do not interfere with those activities. By the same token, you would not prohibit Muslim employees from taking prayer breaks.

Followers of Islam must prayer five times daily, facing east. Some employers provide a quite place for the activity. Often other employees who are not Muslims choose to use those places for quiet reflection.

In any case, federal law requires that under most conditions you must allow Muslim workers to take prayer breaks. The applicable law is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under the law, you must permit the expression of religion at work unless it causes an “undue hardship” for you.

In addition, you must make “reasonable accommodations” for what are called “sincerely held” religious beliefs.

Let’s examine those terms.

In most cases, workplaces already have a system of short breaks. If your Muslim employee were your sole worker, and his prayer breaks required you to hire another employee, that might be considered “undue hardship.” In reality, such situations rarely occur.

A “sincerely held” belief must be supported by evidence, such as at least occasional attendance at a religious service, or some other form of participation in the religion’s activities. An employee could not pretend to be a Christian on Christmas, Jewish during Passover, and a Muslim during Ramadan simply to get more holidays off.

A “reasonable accommodation” might be modifying your female employees’ uniforms, providing long, loose-fitting trousers for Muslim workers rather than the usual short dresses. This would still be considered reasonable if the cost were a little greater. A $10,000 designer outfit would not be a “reasonable accommodation.”

What your employees do during their breaks is, within reason, not your concern. The time your smoking employees’ cigarette breaks take, for example, may exceed the time spent during prayer breaks.