This sidebar goes with Nan Futrell’s article “Religious freedom in the workplace”
Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law
In 2010, a diverse group of participants, including the Baptist Joint Committee, released Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law. It provides detailed answers to 35 questions on issues relating to religion in the public square, and it is available on the website of the Wake Forest University Divinity School’s Center for Religion and Public Affairs at http://divinity.wfu.edu/religion-and-public-affairs/.
May employees express and exercise their faith within secular nongovernmental workplaces?
… [A]n employer is required to accommodate the religious practices of its employees unless such accommodation would cause the employer undue hardship. An employer, therefore, sometimes must accommodate religious practice even if the employer does not have to accommodate similar nonreligious practice. For example, if an employer prohibits the wearing of hats in the workplace, it still might be required to accommodate an employee’s need to wear a head covering at work for religious reasons. Also, if a nongovernmental secular employer permits employees to engage in nonreligious types of personal expression at work, it usually must permit employees to engage in personal religious expression as well. … For example, as a general matter, employees who wish to keep a devotional book at their desks must be permitted to do so if other employees are permitted to keep novels, self-help books or other non-work-related books at their desks. …
Do these same civil rights rules regarding religious accommodation, discrimination and harassment also apply to the governmental workplace? And are there special rules regarding religion that apply only to governmental workplaces?
The same civil rights laws that apply to the nongovernmental workplace also typically apply to the governmental workplace, but government employers also must comply with federal and state constitutional rules and other laws that apply only to governmental bodies. In some cases, these constitutional rules will modify the application of the relevant civil rights laws to the government workplace. And, in every case, these constitutional rules add another layer of law to consider. The Supreme Court has held that government employees do not enjoy free speech rights regarding expression that is part of their job duties. Thus, the government may restrict personal speech, including religious or anti-religious speech, which is understood to be part of an employee’s work responsibilities. … At the same time, however, “[t]he Court has made clear that [governmental] employees do not surrender all their First Amendment rights by reason of their employment.” …
