The old adage that religion is left at the office door is just not feasible in today's environment, says Martin Rutte, president of a consultancy in Santa Fe, N.M., that addresses religion in the workplace. "Religion is a critical part of one's identity more and more these days," he asserts. "By saying categorically 'no' to religion in the workplace, you end up taking away what's most important to people, what drives them. And that's hugely demoralizing."

Generally, employers are obligated to reasonably accommodate employees with religious needs, just as they are required to do for the disabled, as long as it doesn't cause undue hardship to the company. Under federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, workers are entitled to practice, exercise and discuss religion in the workplace without the threat of retribution.

That wasn't the case at Brink's Inc., the armored truck and security services company based in Darien, Conn. When a guard there, Carol Grotts, refused to wear the company's required gray pants uniform because her Pentecostal religion forbids it, managers turned her away. "After I told them about my uniform problem, they were shocked," says Grotts, who worked in the company's Bartonville, Ill., office. "They said they wouldn't have hired me if they'd known." To placate the company, Grotts offered to buy a skirt or culottes (flared pants that resemble a skirt) made out of the same material as the company's uniform, but Brink's refused and fired her. "I knew this was discrimination and I knew this was wrong," says Grotts, a soft-spoken 47-year-old. "It wasn't like my wearing culottes would have hurt their business. They just didn't want it. End of story."

According to the Tanenbaum survey, requests like Grotts' are becoming increasingly common. Twenty percent of the respondents said that they experienced an increase in worker requests for religious accommodation in the past five years.

"The reality is that managers have to balance their business with the values of their employees," says Jessica Collins, an SHRM research associate. "There's no definitive answer to what dress is OK and what's not. Policies have to be in place that are flexible enough to make the workplace productive and progressive."

The EEOC intervened on Grotts' behalf and forced Brink's to hire her back two years later, in 1999. She was desperate for a job. Though Brink's managers allowed Grotts to wear culottes, the atmosphere was heated. From the start, managers told her in a written missive to stay away from discussing "anything about God." Grotts says that directive was a staggering blow. "I go to work to make a living just like everybody else. I work just as hard. I never go to work to push religion on people. Yes, religion is who I am, and if someone wants to know more about me, I'll open up. Am I just supposed to deny what's made the largest impact on my life?"

Late last year, Grotts was fired again, the company citing financial reasons. But Grotts, who remains unemployed, lives across the street from the company and saw that new guards had been hired shortly after she was let go, a point the EEOC used to argue the discrimination suit in court. In January, Brink's settled the case, paying Grotts $30,000 and pledging to train all managers in their Illinois offices in religious accommodation requirements. Brink's did not return phone calls about the case.

In a similar case in January, the EEOC sued Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Alamo Rent-A-Car on behalf of a Muslim woman, Bilan Nur, who worked as a customer service representative at the company's Phoenix airport location. The suit charges that Nur was told that she couldn't wear a headscarf for the holy month of Ramadan, although she'd been allowed to wear one for the past two years. She claims the change in policy was a response to the Sept. 11 tragedy, which had occurred two months earlier. In court documents, Nur alleges that even though she offered to make a scarf out of the company's fabric, and plaster an Alamo patch on the front of it, the company, which had no policy in place concerning headscarves, refused the request and fired her. The suit is pending; Alamo did not return phone calls.

There are examples, no doubt, of employees taking religious expression too far. In a 1995 Nebraska case, a federal appeals court ruled against Christine Wilson, an employee who claimed the right to wear an antiabortion pin showing a particularly disturbing color photo of an aborted fetus. It upset co-workers, including some who shared Wilson's views on abortion. In court, Wilson conceded that the pin caused a serious disruption at work. The court told her that the pin was unacceptable.

What these cases make clear is the tenuous line between what a company should accommodate and what it has the legal right to deny. Granted, employers' concerns about the divisiveness of sectarian rituals are not unfounded. David Grinburg, a senior spokesperson at the EEOC, points out that a general rule of thumb for companies might be: "If the religious expression, whether it be different clothing, displaying some sort of religious paraphernalia, or praying at lunchtime, isn't hurting the business and not disrupting the office culture, it should be allowed."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Victoria Leyva remembers waiting in her office for the new director of human resources to visit her for the first time. The woman, Joan Shaw, had been hired by the University of Chicago Hospital to improve the department. For nearly a year before, Leyva had recruited entry-level personnel for the hospital, and had earned exemplary marks on her employee reviews. Leyva was a Pentecostal Baptist. And Shaw was a Catholic. But Leyva didn't consider that an issue at the time. In fact, with her high review marks, she didn't think she had any reason to worry about the first meeting. Held in the midmorning, it was a straightforward introduction with no more than five minutes of small talk. But, as she found out shortly after, that day she had unknowingly become the target of a campaign to force her out because of her religious beliefs.

What Leyva describes as a concerted battle against her by one woman started out slowly, and perhaps even cautiously. "It was about making me uncomfortable," says Leyva, a stout woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a restrained smile. Shaw asked that she remove two fairly innocuous items from her office -- one was a calendar titled "Treasures of Inspiration: A Woman's Guide to Daily Living" and the other was a clock inscribed "Armitage Baptist Church." According to court documents, Shaw claimed they were "too religious and too denominational."

Leyva charges that Shaw also demanded that she not recruit from local churches, which she'd been doing without resistance since being hired. The complaint states that Shaw indicated she "had a problem with Leyva bringing religion into the workplace." And though Leyva stopped, Shaw continued to accuse her of disobeying orders. Official papers charge that she so much disliked Leyva's beliefs that she not only referred regularly to her as a "Bible thumper" and a "religious fanatic," she also instructed a colleague to gather complaints and "do whatever he could to get her fired."

Like the others in this emerging workplace drama, Leyva, 43, now the director of human resources at Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago, isn't an overtly religious person. She doesn't wear crosses. She doesn't carry a Bible. She dresses like anyone else on the streets of Chicago and talks in a calm, whispery voice a lot like running water. She says she only spoke of her beliefs if someone asked. For instance, she describes a female co-worker coming to her once who'd been going through a very hard divorce. "I sat her down and we had just a very open conversation, like any other two women might have. She asked me what I did when I had problems, and I ended up telling her about my church. She came once and that was the end of it. Was that wrong to help? Was I pushing religion? No, I don't think so. I call it being human."

Court documents portray Shaw as a bold, verbally direct woman who had become reckless and obsessed. In May 1992, a year after coming on board, she told a supervisor to fire Leyva, court documents allege, but the man refused, saying "there was no reason." A week later, he was terminated. On his way out, the suit claims, he told Leyva to "watch her back." Fearing her end, she confronted Shaw. "I went to her to try to work things out," she says. "I told her that I worried about what I'd been hearing. But she just sort of blew it off. Told me I was just being defensive."

As it turned out, her fears materialized anyway. Shaw hired a new supervisor, who, after a week on the job, gave Leyva a negative review. Distraught, Leyva took a vacation to collect herself and figure out her next move. Midweek, however, the new supervisor called to say that he couldn't find some test results from Leyva's recruits. He told her that this was the last straw. When she came in the following Monday, her office was completely boxed up and being used for storage. The message was clear: She'd been clipped. "I remember being very sad," she says. She remembers the new supervisor following her into the office. "I wanted to cry, but I was just completely overwhelmed," she says. "It was just very, very sad."

A year later, EEOC brought her case to court. The hospital denied any wrongdoing and called Leyva's story false, but settled for $110,000. Not long after, Shaw left the hospital for good, according to the hospital.

Recent Stories