Washington Nationals Sued for Religious Discrimination
The Washington Nationals were hit with a $300,000 federal religious discrimination lawsuit on Tuesday. The complaint – available here – alleges that the team illegally discriminated against three former ushers – all Seventh-day Adventists – due to their religious beliefs. Although the team allowed the men to miss games during the 2013 season in order to observe their sabbath (sundown Friday through sundown Saturday), the Nationals allegedly fired the three in 2014 when their religious beliefs prevented them from working at least 80% of the team’s games.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are generally prohibited from discriminating against workers on the basis of their religious beliefs. In applying the law to cases like the one filed against the Nationals, courts typically require that an employer reasonably accommodate its employee’s religious beliefs whenever possible. This means, for instance, that an employer should generally allow an employee to take a particular day off work for religious observation, so long as this preferential scheduling does not impose an “undue hardship” on the business (such as by significantly increasing the company’s costs, or requiring other employees to work more than their fair share of the hours in a week).
The plaintiffs’ suit alleges that the Nationals were willing to reasonably accommodate their religious beliefs in 2013, setting aside the requirement that ushers work 80% of the team’s games in order to allow the men to observe their sabbath. The men contend that the team changed its policy in 2014, however, and terminated their employment due to their failure to have worked a sufficient number of games the previous season. The suit also asserts that the team could easily allow the plaintiffs to observe their sabbath, as Friday evening and Saturday games are particularly desirable work shifts for ushers, many of whom also maintain other day jobs.
So the new suit would appear to assert a credible case of religious discrimination against the Nationals. That having been said, the team will undoubtedly present another side to the story when it responds to the suit in court. For instance, the team could allege that the three plaintiffs were not retained for the 2014 season for reasons other than their scheduling limitations (such as for poor performance). The team might also argue that allowing the men to miss every Friday evening or Saturday afternoon home game would in fact impose an undue hardship on its business, despite the plaintiffs’ claims that there are plenty of readily available replacements for those shifts.
Although the team could have legitimate defenses to assert on its behalf, it still would not be surprising if the Nationals ultimately decide to settle the case. Being charged with religious discrimination is never a good thing from a public relations perspective. Moreover, despite the plaintiffs’ request for $300,000 in damages, other parts of the suit suggest that they may really just be hoping to be reinstated to their positions for the 2015 season. Time will tell, then, if the team ultimately decides that it’s easier to rehire the men in this case than it is to contest their discrimination claims on their merits.
Nathaniel Grow is an Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics and the Yormark Family Director of the Sports Industry Workshop at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. He is the author of Baseball on Trial: The Origin of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, as well as a number of sports-related law review articles. You can follow him on Twitter @NathanielGrow. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not express the views or opinions of Indiana University.
Science will fly us to mars, religion flew us into buildings.
And trolls will scream FIRST!
I’m pretty sure science made those airplanes.
…and the buildings.
Coincidence? I think NOT!
Amen
Just follow the money, man. Follow the money.
I think it best to reserve judgment until all the facts are out. The optics are bad though.
And because of those optics, and the relative pittance in question, I expect them to settle almost immediately. Not worth getting into an ugly, litigious fight over $300k.
Then again, we don’t see teams spending an extra $300,000 to provide more nutritious food to its minor leaguers.
300k sounds low, but i doubt the settlement is anywhere near that point. Any decent lawyer asks for as much as they think they can state with a straight face. I would guess, at best you are looking at the pay for the 3 for a full season, with treble damages. That might even be on the high end.
My guess is they get their jobs back plus attorney fees. The nats make an iron clad policy, and figure out another way to get rid of these 3.
I’m pretty sure these guys could not work Saturday night games either. Sunset this Saturday is 7:41 PM. I guess they could come for the last few innings.
No Friday night games and no Saturday games at all. The article states this.
I’ll just leave this here:
“The team might also argue that allowing the men to miss every Friday evening or Saturday afternoon home game would in fact impose an undue hardship on its business . . . .”
Point taken! Article says no Saturday games, then says no Saturday afternoon games. Most confusing.
But, yeah, if the ushers cannot work until sundown on Saturday, that is going to make it very difficult to work Saturday night games unless they are allowed to start work after the game starts and live close enough to the stadium to make the travel in a short period of time. (I assume that traveling to work would also be unacceptable until sundown.)
“The suit also asserts that the team could easily allow the plaintiffs to observe their sabbath, as Friday evening and Saturday games are particularly desirable work shifts for ushers, many of whom also maintain other day jobs.”
The shifts that the SDAs want to take off are (allegedly) the easiest shifts to fill.
Seems like a dumb law. Sure, it would be nice of an employer to work around an employee’s prefered schedule, whatever the reason. It would be nice if a lot of things. I don’t see why this particular nice thing should be legally mandated.
LBJ hated baseball, everyone knows that.
It’s not a “hey I don’t wanna work because my big toe hurts” or “my favorite rerun of Alice is on tonight, forget it!”, it’s a “my vengeful God may smite me if I work today, I’m not willing to risk it”.
Or, stated differently, religion is not a big issue to some but quite important to others 🙂 (who are afforded legal protections for their beliefs, as other protected classes are as well)
It just seems like a poor personal choice to work a job that has 80% of its shifts during the one period you cannot work. I know of plenty of other jobs that don’t have most of the work required during that sunset Friday to sunset Saturday time frame. Imagine if a baseball player decided they couldn’t play games during this time frame and tried suing for the right to remain on the roster. It just seems unreasonable to expect to keep a job you miss 80% of the shifts for.
I think you might miss a couple things here:
1 – They didn’t miss 80% of their shifts. They missed more than 20% of the home games. I suspect no ushers are scheduled for 100% of home games, but the Nationals require ushers work 80%, per the article.
2 – There’s a substantial difference between an usher and a player. Read the part in the article about an undue hardship. Missing a player who is 4% of the active roster on the team that tens of thousands of fans come to see is a lot more of a hardship than missing a random usher.
I’m not saying I agree with their suit, but those are some pretty big details to overlook.
I read it the same way at first too; “…religious beliefs prevented them from working at least 80% of the team’s games” is not the best wording, it sounds like they missed 80-100% of the games when they missed somewhere north of 20%.
“Made them miss more than the 20% of the team’s games, which according to the team ultimately led to their dismissal” or something similar may have been less ambiguous.
It has happened!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Correa
It would be unusual, but not unprecedented. I know of one Scottish rugby union player, Euan Murray, who doesn’t play on Sunday for religious purposes. And since there are far fewer rugby games in a season than baseball, he’s missing a more significant proportion of playing time.
I suppose once a team felt his contributions weren’t making up for the lack of playing time on Sundays they would stop hiring him. But hey – according to Wikipedia he’s a qualified veterinarian, so hurrah for fallbacks!
Never heard the Civil Rights Act of 1964 called a “dumb law” before. I don’t know your sex/color/ethnicity/religion/national origin, but you probably should be glad your employer can’t fire you for any of those things.
There are a lot of Americans who find the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be a dumb law.
And the majority of the country finds them to be dumb people
man, we really need to stick to baseball – I start to feel really bad about my time on the site when FG readers start referring to civil rights laws as “dumb”
I don’t get why religion falls under that law though. It’s the only of those things you mentioned that is a personal choice. You choose to be a certain religion, and you should have to deal with the consequences of it. You don’t choose your race or ethnicity.
First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Religion is the very first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights so it is kinda a big deal. It is also the most fundamental part of being beyond genetics as a religion (or lack thereof) sets a person’s entire worldview. Furthermore, when religious tolerance breaks down things tend to get… messy. The people who wrote the US Constitution were well aware of such messiness, both home and abroad, and given current events things have not really changed in that regard.
Most people are born into their religion. And, even if you convert, most religious people would not describe their religion not as a choice but a mandate from a higher power. “Religion” covers atheism/agnosticism/etc too. If you don’t believe in a higher power, could you suddenly “choose” to do so?
For better or worse, of all these “innate” characteristics (race/religion/origin/sex/orientation) that we usually think should be protected from discrimination, religion is the only one the founding fathers bothered to explicitly put in the constitution. While race (15th amendment) and sex (19th amendment) were added later on, they are only mentioned in terms of voting rights.
Religion is innate? …Says the hyper-religious zealot who thinks he is on earth solely to serve some imaginary being.
At one time, most people were also “born into” families that believed in a flat earth. It was up to each person to believe his/her parents…or choose science. Science won. Somehow our innate belief in something changed.
Maybe it’s a dumb law until your boss tries to fire you for your religion. There are a lot of people who find it ok when it’s some other religion.
I wonder if the plantiffs could convince Peter Angelos to represent them pro bono? He seems pretty into suing the Nats.
And the moral of this story is to never do anything to accommodate any employee if you are an employer. The moment you stop accommodating them you have a lawsuit on your hands.
Welp. That’s…one interpretation. I guess?
OWNER CLASS STRUGGLE!
OWNERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
OWNERS FIGHTING FOR MORE SUBJUGATION!
OWNERS’ RIGHTS NOW!
It’s sad, but you’re right – especially if one of the key arguments these men are relying on is the fact that the Nationals accommodated them in 2013 but are unwilling to do so now. Washington tried to work with them and now it’s coming back to bite them in the butt. That tells me that the safest bet is for a business owner to not give anything more than the absolute bare minimum, since then no one can say “Well you did it once, you should be able to do it again!”
The bare minimum is reasonable accommodation. Arguably, that’s what the Nats gave them in 2013 but failed to give them in 2014.
My point is the Nationals could have projected how many days these employees would have worked in 2013 (seeing as how they knew the schedule ahead of time) and said from the get go, “No, that will take you below our 80% threshold. Either come to work on the Sabbath or be fired.” But they didn’t do that. They tried to work with them for a whole year, maybe assuming they could get enough people to cover those shifts, before deciding it simply wasn’t tenable. Sure, if Nationals had said no right from the start maybe they would’ve been sued that much earlier, but from my perspective it only hurts them that the employee can argue “Well, you did it once, so you should be able to do it again.” Not giving anything they didn’t have to would undermine that argument. (Not saying that’s what I want, just an unfortunate reality.)
Generally that type of evidence is inadmissible. Of course, you never know what a judge might allow and there are no practical checks.
The Nationals also have the right to hire employees that aren’t observant Seventh-Day Aventists to cover those Saturday shifts. Kind of the beauty of a multicultural city like DC, really. I mean, hey, I’m willing to work those shifts!
Having to hire additional employees isn’t an undue burden, it’s quite genuinely the cost of doing business.
The Nationals have plenty of employees who aren’t Seventh-Day Adventist who work both Friday and Saturday, but apparently they felt their current pool of employees couldn’t sufficiently cover those shifts. It’s unfair to put the blame on them and demand they must hire even more employees, which comes at a greater cost, rather than simply expect their current employees meet a certain standard. They tried to work with these men, and it simply didn’t work out. I don’t see how Washington did anything wrong here.
It’s completely idiotic that something like this was ever legislated/interpreted to qualify as religious discrimination. They’re not being “discriminated against” because they believe their particular brand of wacko nonsense. They got fired because they voluntarily refused to do a job they were perfectly physically capable of doing. Boo f’ing hoo.
“Particular brand of wacko nonsense.”
This phrase could be used to justify firing people for, for example, going to mass instead of work on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday. Are you OK with an employer believing that Christianity is “wacko nonsense” and firing people for it? Or, if you’re atheist, is it ok to be fired for not believing in someone else’s “wacko nonsense?”
If I were a pastor, and I refused to work on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday…
…then you would have a rapidly declining congregation.
Umm it is clearly wacko nonsense. Honestly employers should be able to fire you for any reason they care to. There are lots of employers and the ones who make arbitrary and capricious staffing decisions will underperform. No one owes anyone a job.
Yes, theoretically the free market will punish employers who act vindictively or discriminatorily.
1) That worked great for the south before 1964. Southern businesses knew they needed black employees and black customers in order to succeed.
3) Sometimes immoral discrimination doesn’t hurt business. Sometimes businesses have bigoted clients and customers.
4) Most discrimination isn’t being done by the Board of Directors or the CEO or the shareholders. It’s done by low-level managers who don’t suffer any financial repercussions when they hurt the business.
5) The fact that maybe eventually the company will fail is of great solace to the employee who got fired because of what color/race/ethnicity/religion/sex/orientation he happened to have been born.
A quick note on Jim Crow. The laws more or less made it impossible to not discriminate. If a business wanted to serve both black and white customers, they would either be shut down by the government or visited by a group of “concerned citizens” (which often included the police chief, the mayor, etc.) that would threaten them (“Nice business you have. Too bad if it were to mysteriously burn down.”) The market was not free. Whether a free market would have ended or at least reduced discrimination in the South is another question, but that was simply not an option.
It OK to be fired if you don’t show up for work but are physically able to do so. Period.
The anti-religious discrimination clause is VASTLY more important to non-Christians than Christians.
It used to be perfectly legal to say “No Jews allowed” in a particular university, or to have a very small maximum quota, and LOTS of universities had such quotas.
It was perfectly legal to refuse to hire an atheist, or someone who wasn’t your particular denomination. LOTS of jobs were basically Christian only need apply.
A woman’s headscarf can still get her refused jobs.
Seriously, the various forms of Christian fundamentalists would be the ONLY group that would be really happy if religion were removed from the list of protected categories. It’s there for very good reason.
Seventh day Adventists would be inconvenienced by such a removal, but most people admit they are Christians, they wouldn’t be hurt nearly as much as the atheists.
To both chuckb and Doug: “No jews allowed” or “No atheists need apply” is clearly discriminating against the beliefs themselves. Furthermore, since basically no (legal) modern employment is 364 days a year, scheduling a couple of days off throughout the year is well within the norm of how much time other people with the job spend at it.
The standard is basically completely backwards. Test 1 should be “Does your (interpretation of your) religion allow you to perform this job to the level that other people are performing it or similar jobs?”, and if the answer is no, then STFU and go do something else. Sucks to be you, aspiring Hindu butcher or aspiring Muslim bacon taster. And here the dingdongs want 2 days where they don’t have to work while everybody else makes do with 1 (scheduling 1 day off limits would be 85% work rate at worst), so there shouldn’t be any problem telling them to get lost. They clearly fail the test.
Instead test #1 is determining how much an employer can bend over backwards to help work around some special snowflake’s fcuktardery, and because most employers can actually work around a small number of underperforming dipshitts without too great a hassle, this kind of complete stupidity- and the entitlement attitude that goes with it- gets perpetuated when it never should have gotten one foot off the ground to begin with.
I feel bad for people who have to be around you in real life.
Religious beliefs = “entitlement attitude.”
Guess where that “entitlement attitude ” comes from…The 1st amendment that protects religious beliefs and the 14th amenmdment’s due process and equal protection clauses.
Their “ffucktardery” is simply a religious belief to which you don’t subscribe. Your opinion would be completely different if it was your religious belief — one you believe isn’t practiced by “dingdongs” and “snowflakes” practicing “fucktardery ” — that was being discriminated against.
The bottom line is that, to you, it’s OK to fire them because their religious beliefs are weird. That, discriminating against them because of the content of their beliefs, is illegal.
So if I don’t want to hire any physically handicapped people, I just make sure there are a few stairs leading into my business and I’m in the clear, right?
Also, I think this should be clear, but while these guys get two days off while perhaps others get one, they also don’t get paid for those days. It seems entirely possible that they were fired because the Nats did not want to deal with a slight inconvenience.
chuckb, if you’d quote remotely accurately, instead of exactly the opposite of every conclusion, I never said that firing them because they believe their particular superstitious idiocy is ok. I said it should be fine to fire people who voluntarily refuse to perform a job to the standard everybody else does.
The entitlement attitude isn’t about the right to believe supernatural crap, it’s that believing stupid supernatural crap gives you special rights to take an extra day off every weekend homestand that nobody else gets, and that you have some special right to your job, the one that you’re choosing to not do adequately, over somebody willing to actually show up and work. That nonsense isn’t remotely in the 1st or 14th amendment- it’s a stupid interpretation from the same council of enlightened geniuses who, over the years, have brought us the likes of Dred Scott and Korematsu. Clearly they never get anything completely and totally backwards. Ever.
(this has nothing to do with physical disabilities because cripples obviously aren’t CHOOSING to VOLUNTARILY not do work that cripples just can’t do)
You are why people hate most atheists and agnostics. It’s not a “to each their own, believe whatever you’d like if it helps you get through the day”, it’s a “you’re dumb for your superstitious silly beliefs, let me mockingly drone on about why that’s so stupid and you should feel stupid for believing it.”
Gross.
My sisters once had a teacher who ALWAYS, year after year, gave a quiz on Yom Kippur or Rush Hashana and refused to give a makeup.
Gosh, shouldn’t be in school if your beliefs interfere with your duties.
Except for other tests and quizes she did allow makeup work.
Or it just happens that job X “requires” that you socialize some outside the workplace, and that the “required” socialization happens at the owner’s church.
This sort of thing is WHY if the case goes to court the burden of proof is on the business or school to prove that they can’t accommodate. Because it is in fact utterly trivial to claim that X is required and make sure that X is only met by the “right” people.
GMAFB, the test you’re describing is basically the test that exists. You’re pissed off about a law that only exists in your head.
If you can’t perform the essential functions of your job, if your accommodation request is not reasonable, or if granting the accommodation would create an undue hardship on the employer, then you lose the lawsuit.
Yirmiyahu, that’s clearly wrong. Just look at pharmacist refusals. They refuse to do the essential element of their job (filling prescriptions), yet it’s illegal (in at least a few states) to fire them for refusing to do their jobs without jumping through the additional hoop of proving that accommodating them is too much of a pain. F that. F that right up the ass with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat.
Doug: sure, there’s more subtlety to the whole thing in cases that aren’t blanket stupidity like refusing to work enough or refusing to do your job period (pharmacists). Obviously there’s a protocol in place for students missing days and making up work, which is presumably fair for everybody, and a deviation needs to be justified, and the burden of proof there *should* be on the teacher (it should be on the student to challenge the full protocol itself). For extraneous job activities, the burden of proof *should* be on the employee to show that the activities either have nothing to do with the job or are explicitly meant to favor one religion for no job-relevant reason (I mean if you’re a bible salesman or something, expect to have to learn how to fit in in churches).
Basically, “are they being actively forked with?” over “are they being accommodated?”. Sure, there would be more discrimination on the margins because it would be harder to win under that standard, but as long as the egregious offenders are kept in check, which they would be, that prevents the institutionalization and widespread acceptance of major discrimination without the constant fear of lawsuits over minor things and the odiousness of forced accommodation. That’s all way more subtle than the case here, or of pharmacists who won’t fill, which should be absolute slam dunks but aren’t because the interpretations are way out of whack.
GMAFB is MAD at the less fortunate and we are all gonna listen.
There is definitely a bias: Nearly all Christian holidays come with several days. Christmas being a federal holidays is pretty shows the bias in the United States. Why isn’t there a holiday that just happens to fall on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha?
More pragmatic than anything. When 90%+ of the population is celebrating a particular holiday, it is just easier to make it a national holiday as otherwise it is a logistical nightmare. When 1% of the population is celebrating a particular holiday, then you can work around that without shutting everything down.
My father simply claimed that Christmas is a secular holiday based on the fact that the federal government gave him a day off.
Based on my observations of behavior, I can’t argue with him. Catholics seem to go to church for a fairly short service that day, but otherwise it looks like a secular celebration of materialism and football.
Listen, I am not religious, but we live in the United States. A place which was massively influenced on people escaping religion persecution. The law has and always will attempt to protect religious freedom,despite not being reasonable.
But this is complicated issue. I could follow a religion which Wednesday was the holy day, how would this work out for a salaried? Would it be illegal for a company not to hire me? Would it be illegal for them to pay me less than person with the same position because I can’twork the 9-5 M-F.
30.9% of the Nationals games in 2014 occurred on Friday after sundown or on Saturday prior to sundown. Seems like a poor job choice for a 7th Day Adventist.
Or a great one for a 7th Day Adventist trying to file a discrimination lawsuit.
Best comment of the year on FG.
This is seriously making me consider converting.
Saturday and Sunday make up 28% of the days of the week. Doesn’t seem like they miss much more than a normal mon-fri job does.
Stuff like this makes me sad. I’m a big believer in religious liberty, but I think at some point an individual has to take responsibility for themselves. It’s not like the Nationals weren’t willing to work with these guys – they apparently gave them a lot of leeway until it simply became untenable. I could understand if the company fired them the first time the issue was raised, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. While I’m not a Seventh-Day Adventist, I regularly attend church on Sundays, but I’ve also had jobs at various points in my life that have required me to work on Sunday. I’ve had to weigh out whether or not my convictions made it worth it to stick with those jobs or if I needed to make a change. But the burden was on me to figure it out. We have a right to believe what we want, but we have to accept the consequences if those beliefs end up affecting us in a negative way. Or, to put it differently, these men have a right to their religious freedom, but they don’t have a RIGHT to work for the Washington Nationals.
Friday and Saturday is when they need the ushers the most. That’s when the games are packed, and you need every available person.
You don’t need a lot of people for the Tuesday afternoon games. Also, not all 7th day Adventists are that particular about working on the Sabbath. There’s plenty of wiggle room.
True, but the plaintiffs also assert that the supply of ushers is greatest for those shifts because many can’t work the Tuesday afternoon game.
Since you’ve defended this throughout the thread, I’ll ask you: where is the line, if anywhere?
If I say “I don’t want to work weekends”, presumably you agree my employer can tell me to get lost. But according to you, the law is right to enforce that if I say “I don’t want to work weekends…because religion”, my employer cannot fire me.
So how far can I take this? If my religion only permits me to work two days per week, must an employer accommodate me? I’m not asking about the law. I’m asking about what you think is right.
The law spells out where the line is.
The employee needs to demonstrate they can perform the essential functions of the job, and that the accommodation they are asking for is REASONABLE. The employer can also show that the accommodation would create an undue hardship on the employer.
Presumably, the Nats will point out that ushers need to work 80% of games. In all likelihood, a judge will toss the lawsuit because he’ll find that the 80% requirement is an essential function of the job, or that the accommodation is not reasonable, or that granting the accommodation will pose an undue hardship.
I specifically said I was not asking about the law. We all know about the law already.
I think this is a difficult issue. Isn’t this ONLY an issue for the Nationals? I believe certain things such as Title II of the 1967 Civil Right Act specifics businesses that are engaged in interstate commerce. But the anti-trust exemption of baseball solely relies on the fact that baseball is NOT interstate commerce. But Congress has completely authority over Washington D.C., so it applies regardless. I could be reading the law wrong….
The Civil Rights Act applies to all 30 teams. While the original antitrust ruling held that MLB wasn’t engaged in interstate commerce, the Flood decision in 1972 specifically held that baseball was interstate commerce. In any event, courts had held that the original ruling on the interstate commerce issue was limited to the antitrust context, and did not apply to other areas of the law (such as federal labor law, for instance, in a case allowing the umpires to form a union back in the late 60s).
Thanks, that answers my question. Legally is seems very mind boggling to be that the court would keep the antitrust exemption due to precedent, but under other rulings, believe the precedent not applicable. Especially because the court has been more progressive about overturning precedent in recent years considering there are close to 50 cases overturned just since 1980. I think it is understandable to be confused why justification for precedent doesn’t work in some cases, but there is no issues letting the anti-trust exemption fly right by on the same grounds.
It seems like if you want to use precedent, it either has to stand or be overturned..
The Supreme Court can only overturn a precedent when given the opportunity. I don’t think anyone has appealed a case involving the antitrust exemption to the Court since 1972. It’s possible they’ll get the chance in the San Jose lawsuit.
The reported 80 percent rule apparently applies to persons of any religion or of no religion at all. The rule does not appear to discriminate.
And if this were a free exercise clause case you’d have an important point. In reality, though, it’s a case under the Civil Rights Act.
“Must wear only a Nats hat on head” applies to persons of any religion or of no religion at all. Sorry Muslim women and others, this rule does not appear to discriminate.
“Must sing ‘God Bless America’ during 7th inning” applies to persons of any religion or of no religion at all. Sorry Athiests, this rule does not appear to discriminate.
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Welcome to the real world people. Where of you can’t work the hours everyone else does you get fired and find somthing else to do. Can’t believe people are even arguing the fact.
This seems like a more complicated issue that some posters want to admit. I submit that:
(1) You cannot fire becayse they are jewish, christian, atheist, or anything remotely similar.
(2) A Muslim or Jew can, for exmaple, be fired from his job in the corner butcher shop if he refuses to handle pork. (Sorry if picking on particular groups there, but it was a really easy example.)
To clarify my own point: it’s not obvious which of these case the Nationals dismissal is more like. There are lots of facts we’d need to know, which none of us do know, in order to know the answer. While it’s suggestive that they were able to do so in a prior season, it’s not beyond reasonable doubt evidence.
I think it’s pretty straightforward. They aren’t being fired for being of a particular religion, they’re being fired for not coming to work enough (regardless of the reason).
I’m assuming those are the best two nights for observing the Orion nebula.
Lets be honest, these people are clearly looking for an easy handout in the form of 300k–that’s the real tragedy here. Knowingly taking a job you will only be able to work less than 20% of the time is unconscionable.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is fantastic piece of legislation that has helped advance our country forward, but it is sad when it is abused in a case such as this. These are three people who just wanted to work at a baseball game as a “hobby.” If they can demonstrate that they actually relied on this 20% salary to live, then maybe they have a case–but i doubt it.
Your reading comprehension is unconscionable.
“their religious beliefs prevented them from working at least 80% of the team’s games” is the same thing as “working less than 20% of the time”. Nice try though.
You misunderstood the sentence. Did you really think that 80% of Nationals home games are on Friday or Saturdays? Obviously that’s not right.
The problem is that the Nationals wanted to require ushers to work at least 80% of their home games while only 70% of their home games were Sabbath-free. Therefore, these ushers couldn’t fulfill the Nationals requirements due to religious reasons and therefore were fired.
When he wrote that “their religious beliefs prevented them from working at least 80% of the games”, he meant that they were unable to work 80% of the games and therefore were under the Nationals limit.
It’s a poorly worded sentence that Clay misinterpreted. You can easily come away from it with that same reading until you say, “hey wait, there’s no way that 80%+ of their games are on those two particular nights of the week.” It really should be restated.
Also, a requirement to come to work at least 20% of the time doesn’t seem like something that needs to be in writing. Or to exist at all? So perhaps it is less of reading comprehension fail and more of a common sense fail.
The lack of work ethic from these people with their made up religion is appalling. We used to build things in this country! Then to blaspheme on top of it, Jesus Christ. Everyone knows there is only one God and His name is Allan.
The Dodgers probably should have fired Koufax for refusing to pitch on Yom Kippur.
After getting angry with most of these posts, this made me laugh – well done.
I’m a little surprised that there would be so much support for religion at this site. Science teaches us to accept nothing on faith, but to test everything. I think the Sabbath is an excellent idea, probably originating because people realized they were happier and more productive when they took some time out from work. But there is no evidence whatsoever that the beneficial effects of the Sabbath only occur when it’s taken for the same period of time every week. On the contrary, there’s very good reason to believe that we are happier and more productive when we vary our routine from time to time. And given that we can only find this out by practicing changing the Sabbath, a strict adherence is counter-productive.
This is one of the major problems with almost all religions: they were originally based on ideas that might have made a great deal of sense in their time and context, but which become a hindrance when the times and context change. Seventh Day Adventists observe the Sabbath at the same time every week because they fail to appreciate this. Anyone who understands anything about the esoteric core that underlies the outward practices of religions knows that these practices are only intended to point followers to this core. Blindly following them gives their adherents some structure in their lives, but the notion that one can’t change the routine without violating the underlying principles of the religion is absurd.
Being opposed to religious discrimination has nothing to do with supporting religion.
^^This. We’ll said.
No one is forcing these dopes to take a job which requires them to work during their fake religion’s holy times.
I need to make up a religion which allows me to only work during the times I want to work
Yes. That’s EXACTLY what they did.
*rolls eyes*
As a Catholic youth, I rested on Sunday till Dad told me to do my chores. The Creator has all kind of jobs. If one job don’t fit try for another. Quit it!!! If you rally want a job you will find one.
Can I have their jobs no that they are resting on Saturdays???
Are ushers paid a salary or are they paid by the hour? This article doesn’t say, but I would bet they are paid by the hour. If that’s correct, then the Nats are losing very little by bringing in other ushers to fill those Saturday games, even if they have to hire a couple extra ushers. And these ushers would be losing money by not working Friday/Saturday games, and that’s fine as that is their choice. They should be allowed to stay on as employees, but presumably not get paid for games they miss. It’s fair that Jewish employees get to take their holidays off, that Catholics and others take Good Friday off, and that Adventists take their Sabbath off. Reasonable accommodation would mean that the Nats would let them do that.
Unless you have worked for this organization, you can’t speak. I worked for this organization since they were at RFK. The National didn’t have any of these problems until they got new management. It was a lot of employees that had fulltime jobs and came straight from work to the ballpark. This new management is not very accommodating. If you get off at your fulltime job at 4pm and you have to report to the ballpark by 5pm, it is sometime very hard to do that when you may have to take the subway etc. Some of the original employees gave 100 percent of themselves and this new management mistreated them and set them up so they could fire them. Trust me.