“PROVE YOU ARE A RELIGIOUS FED”
When Alisia, a VA employee, asked to have every Sunday off to practice her religion, management asked her to prove that she actually participated in religious activity. More specifically, it wanted the name and address of her house of worship. (Were they going to contact the pastor to confirm she showed up in a pew each week?) And until she coughed that information up it was not going to grant her a religious accommodation. Alisia gave them an EEO charge instead that was just decided by the EEOC addressing whether or when employers can demand employees prove their religious activity. It wrote:
we note that the Commission has long held that employers should ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief, as the Commission and the courts are not, and should not, be in the business of deciding whether a person holds religious beliefs for the “proper” reasons. As we find no basis to deviate from the general rule, we find that Complainant did in fact have a “bona fide” religious belief.
In short, agencies are to take an employees’ word for it that they need the accommodation for religious practice purpose. But don’t pass over that last sentence too quickly. For example, an if agency hears you are moonlighting at another job during your time off, EEOC probably will allow an employer to demand proof.
The Commission awarded Alisia compensatory damages and the restoration of all leave she used for religious practice, ordered the agency to grant the accommodation, and required the agency to consider disciplining the involved managers.
Another helpful takeaway from this case is the Commission’s reminder about what is needed for an employee to establish a prima facie case, shifting the burden to the employee.
The traditional framework for establishing a prima facie case of discrimination based on religious accommodation requires an employee to demonstrate that: (1) he or she has a bona fide religious belief, the practice of which conflicted with his employment; (2) he or she informed the agency of this belief and conflict; and (3) the agency nevertheless enforced its requirement against the employee.
For more details, check out Alisia M., v. Douglas A. Collins, Secretary, Dep’t. of Veterans Affairs, EEOC No. 2023004522 (2026). And don’t ignore all the religious accommodation cases we have reported on in Fedsmill. We have tried to capture a wide variety of situations which most employees would never think might be covered. Simply tap the “religion” topic in the index on the right side of our web page.
