First came the disputes over whether employers are allowed to fire workers refusing COVID-19 vaccination. Now come the fights about who gets religious exemptions when vaccination mandates kick in — and what counts as fair treatment for people even if they get an accommodation.
Two years into a five-year, $15.6 million contract with the public university — a contract that’s said to make him the highest-paid state employee — Rolovich sought a religious exemption to Washington’s vaccination requirement for state workers. Rolovich was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic high school in the San Francisco Bay area, but the 42-year-old coach reportedly declined to say whether he identifies as Catholic today.
Rolovich had sounded hopeful days earlier. “I believe it’s going to work out the right way,” he said during a Saturday press conference following WSU’s conference win over Stanford University In his early 60s and nearing retirement, Crawford learned after being granted the exemption in July that an upcoming Trader Joe’s leadership meeting in North Carolina would be for vaccinated staff only, his lawsuit states. Crawford’s absence would harm his performance review, according to a regional manager who said he was just relaying the news, it adds.
“They gave him the accommodation, but then they made it impossible for him to meet his job expectation afterwards,” said Ronald Hackenberg, Crawford’s attorney.United Airlines lawsuit Hackenberg, a staff attorney with the Pacific Justice Institute, said the religious legal advocacy organization has been swamped with calls from potential clients.
That’s basically getting fired, their Texas federal court lawsuit alleged. Lawyers for United and the workers initially agreed to a brief pause on unpaid-leave placements. and last week a judge, Mark Pittman, extended the block on unpaid leave through late October. When employers learn a worker will not get vaccinated because of a belief, they “must provide a reasonable accommodation unless it would pose an undue hardship.”What counts as “religion” in employment law can be “broad,” the EEOC says. As a result, employers should assume the accommodation request is genuine — that is, unless the employer is aware of facts that could supply “an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or the sincerity of a particular belief.
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