Claims of religious discrimination on the rise

"Why's he wearing that mess on his head?"

Hassan S. Rashad overheard the comment from his co-workers and knew it was directed at him. He wears a kufi, or skullcap.

They mispronounced his name, calling him "Hussein."

The slights, which intensified after 9/11, came mostly from other employees, Rashad recalled last week. But a supervisor once approached him while he was reading the Quran at lunch and said: "You shouldn't be reading that."

Worst of all, unlike other equipment operators, he was occasionally given jobs such as restroom cleanup.

Rashad said a complaint to the human resources manager changed nothing.

So he filed one with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that his Suffolk employer discriminated against him because he is Muslim. At a mediation session, he said, an EEOC official told a mute contingent of managers from his company to leave Rashad alone.

The Chesapeake resident is among a rising tide of workers who say they've been mistreated because of their religion.

In the past decade, the federal agency has recorded an 87 percent increase in the number of complaints alleging religious discrimination at work. That's more than four times the increase for complaints overall. Locally, religious complaints rose almost 65 percent in the past five years.

Complaints from Muslims nearly tripled in the past decade and now account for nearly one-quarter of the anti-religious accusations.

The plaintiffs aren't always from minority religions.

In a recent high-profile example, weather forecaster Jon Cash said he had filed a religious-discrimination complaint with the EEOC against WAVY-TV.

Cash said he was fired in August after he announced during a sermon that he would pursue his Christian ministry full-time next summer. That, station manager Doug Davis told him, was "bad for business," said Cash, who had worked at the station for 20-plus years. Davis has declined to comment.

Lawyers and clerical officials offer a web of reasons for the spike in religious claims: Misunderstanding of Muslim customs - or sharper hostility toward Muslims after 9/11. Greater awareness of avenues of recourse for mistreatment. A growth in strident positions among religions and political parties.

But many also caution not to overstate the problem.

Tom Lucas, an employment lawyer who is a partner at Jackson Lewis LLP in Norfolk, noted that religious complaints made up less than 4 percent of all complaints nationwide last year. In contrast, accusations of racial and gender discrimination accounted for 36 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

"I think most employers are accustomed and well-trained and alert to issues of religious accommodation," Lucas said. "It's not the biggest issue in the workplace."

Robin Mancoll, director of the Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, said: "We haven't heard of a situation with religious questions in the workplace in a long time."

Imam Vernon Fareed said he's heard of plenty.

Fareed, who leads the Masjid William Salaam mosque in Norfolk, where Rashad prays, said he's received more than 40 complaints, similar to Rashad's, from local Muslims of harassment on the job in the past year.

"I advise them to comply with the policies of the workplace up to the point where you have to violate your own religious beliefs," Fareed said. "Go to work on time; do whatever you are asked to do. But if that employer insists that you remove your headpiece that you wear as a religious symbol of your faith, that's where you draw the line."

Relatively few complaints prompt the EEOC to sue an employer. But in the past month, the agency has sued several big-name companies, alleging religious bias:

- The EEOC accused the Supercuts hair-salon chain of requiring a California stylist to work on Sundays, though she said she couldn't because of her religious beliefs, and then firing her when she refused.

- The agency said Walmart disciplined and threatened to fire an assistant manager in Washington who didn't want to work on Sundays for religious reasons.

- AutoZone violated the law, the EEOC said, when it subjected a Sikh worker in the Boston area to harassment - a supervisor asked whether he was a terrorist who wanted to blow up the store - and refused to let him wear a turban although that is required for men in the Sikh religion.

In a recent Virginia case, the EEOC last month sued Lawrence Transportation Systems, saying the Harrisonburg moving company refused to hire a veteran mover who is Rastafarian because he wouldn't cut his dreadlocks for religious reasons.

Federal law prohibits harassing, hiring or firing an employee because of his religion. An exception allows religious organizations to offer hiring preferences to adherents of their religion.

As for more detailed issues, "the basic rule is that businesses have to accommodate the religious beliefs of employees, so long as it doesn't cause an undue burden for the business," said Edward White, senior counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice, a nonprofit legal group founded by Pat Robertson.

The center is representing a Texas bus driver who sued his ex-employer after he was fired for refusing to take a customer to a Planned Parenthood office because abortion violates his Christian beliefs.

"They fired our client on the spot and then sent another driver," showing that his concerns easily could have been addressed, White said.

Employment attorneys such as Lucas and Arlene Klinedinst with Vandeventer Black LLP in Norfolk say they advise employers to try to accommodate religious requests, such as time off for holy days.

Those requests, though, might pose an "undue burden," Klinedinst said, if the company has a very small staff or has no one else with the skills to substitute for the worker.

Klinedinst said a colleague at her firm recently fielded a question from an employer, wondering whether to honor a Muslim worker's request for a place to pray a few times during the day. The advice: Grant the request, especially if you're allowing workers coffee breaks and time for water-cooler chitchat.

Likewise, Lucas and Klinedinst said employers should generally permit workers to wear crucifixes or religious head coverings, unless they pose a safety hazard.

Prayer meetings in a conference room during a lunch break are usually OK, they said, as long as workers don't feel coerced to attend. Proselytizing to join a church or religion often isn't, particularly if employees complain that it makes them uncomfortable.

Rashad's advice to employers: "For whatever religion it is, educate yourself. Talk to people."

To avert conflict, policies that treat religions equally should be distributed to all employees and bosses, said Rabbi Howard Mandell of Temple Emanuel in Virginia Beach. Mandell is a former Alabama civil-rights lawyer who won a case representing a Seventh-day Adventist whose employer required him to work on Saturdays - which Adventists observe as the Sabbath.

Klinedinst also advocated an open-door policy to encourage workers to voice concerns.

After the EEOC mediation session, Rashad said the harassment abated. But "I knew my days were numbered." And the troubles resumed a few years later.

The restroom assignments returned. After his pilgrimage to Mecca in 2006, he overheard a co-worker saying: "I hope he didn't go there to become a terrorist." Islam requires followers to visit the city in Saudi Arabia, if they can afford to, at least once.

In August 2008, Rashad said he was laid off, along with two other workers, from the Suffolk facility of Vulcan Materials Co. The others, he said, were later offered their jobs back. He wasn't, making him wonder, once again, whether he had been singled out for his religion.

In a statement Friday, Vulcan's senior labor and employment counsel, Tessa Hughes, said the company prohibits religious discrimination and heard no complaints from Rashad after the EEOC mediation session.

"We made every attempt to accommodate the requirements of his faith," Hughes wrote, "including granting him a 60-day leave of absence so that he could make a pilgrimage to Mecca. During this period, we held his job open for him, and he resumed his duties upon returning" from Saudi Arabia."

She also said he was laid off because of the poor economy.

In the job he's held since, Rashad said, he's encountered no problems and relishes the chance to answer co-workers' questions about Islam.

His past experience hasn't clouded his outlook or that of Fareed, his imam.

"People who have these prejudices are in the minority," Fareed said. "I believe goodness will always triumph over ugliness."

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com