Catholic working for a company with “strong muslim ties” is fired for eating pepperoni pizza and a BLT. Not in one sitting, mind you. They were separate meals. You know, if you could fired everywhere for eating a BLT I wouldn’t be able to hold down a job.
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Yes – that’s outrageous.
Oops, just downed a BLT.
Not at all outrageous – see the Volokh posting on it:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_08_00.shtml#1091665785
Quick excerpt:
No, just as a Christian-owned company’s firing an employee because he is a homosexual is not illegal religious discrimination. Antidiscrimination laws bar people from discriminating based on the employee’s religion. An employer may still discriminate based on their employee’s conduct — food preferences, sexual preferences, and the like — because of the employer’s beliefs, whether those beliefs are religious or secular.
Agreed, Michael. If I ran a buisiness and let people go home early on Good Friday, I wouldn’t want to be slapped with a lawsuit.
As I have pointed out in comments on other blogs, it would be religious discrimination if the employee’s religion *required* her to eat pork at the workplace, but that’s not the case. Those attacking this employer seem to believe that no employer should be allowed to impose any obligations on his workers that might arise from religious motivations, and that if he does so, that’s a violation of the employees’ religious freedom. This position amounts to taking the federal courts’ Establishment Clause jurisprudence and applying it to private employers. And if it were employed consistently, Catholic hospitals wouldn’t be able to forbid doctors on their staffs from performing abortions or prescribing contraceptives. I would think that Catholics, of all people, would want to protect the right of private employers to run their businesses according to what they believe are moral principles.
I agree with Seamus and Michael. The only thing this company arguably did wrong is not writing the policy down. I think we should be defending them, not attacking them, because if they lost in court, that same ruling would be used against us for a variety of issues.