Lexology.com
Littler Mendelson
Breanne M. Sheetz
USA
August 2 2012
According to data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, religious discrimination complaints have nearly doubled in the last 15 years. Hospitals are not immune from these types of claims, a point that has been reinforced recently by a federal district court and a state attorney general.
In
Hickey v. State University of New York at Stony Brook Hospital, a federal court denied summary judgment to both parties and allowed the plaintiff’s Title VII claims to proceed to trial. The plaintiff was a born-again Christian who worked as a painter for the hospital. After his first termination in 2006, he filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, claiming discrimination based on his religion and ethnicity. He later withdrew the complaint in exchange for reinstatement. As part of the reinstatement agreement, the hospital prohibited the plaintiff from proselytizing on the hospital grounds and permitted him to read his Bible only in the hospital chapel and break rooms. Upon his return to work in 2008, the plaintiff started wearing a lanyard with the phrase “I (love heart symbol) Jesus.” His supervisor told him to remove the lanyard because it was not part of the uniform, but he refused. Another supervisor reported that he preached about religion to her and other members of her family. The hospital terminated the plaintiff a month later because of “several incidents and his unsatisfactory job performance.”
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