In an important case, the U.S. Supreme Court recently clarified generally the costs or expenditures an employer would have to incur before it can show that a particular accommodation of religious beliefs constitutes undue hardship under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  In a unanimous opinion, the Court held that an employer denying a

Last week I wrote about a religious discrimination case where an employer snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This week, we have a Fifth Circuit opinion where the court took away an employer’s victory in another religious discrimination case and sent the case back to the trial court

The status of an employee as a supervisor or nonsupervisor can have a significant impact on the outcome of a discrimination, harassment or retaliation case. For example, if an employee who commits a hostile work environment is a supervisor, the employer could be deprived of valuable legal defenses like the Faragher/Ellerth affirmative defense. A recent case from

Last term the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the existence of the ministerial exception to many of the federal employment discrimination laws. This week, the Fifth Circuit took up the application of the ministerial exception for the first time since the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hosanna-Tabor and applied the exception broadly.

Philip Cannata was the Music

Imagine this, its Friday and you are sitting in your office as Director of Verizon’s newly created Office of Reasonable Accommodation.  An employee, I’ll call him Joe, walks into your office.  Joe tells you he’s recently converted to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (i.e., he is now a Pastafarian); that Friday’s