As for not taking a job you know you can’t/won’t do, i agree. However, companies should make reasonable allowances to account for peoples beliefs and disabilities. e.g. if you are muslim, your employer should give you a place to pray at required times. If you are wheelchair bound, your employer shouldn’t be asking you to climb ladders.

In situations where your circumstances change, the company should give you the required help or try to find a different job within the company that you can do. e.g. if you were a roofer but got hit by a car and paralysed below the waist, a company should move you to an admin role if a) it has one going, and b) you want it and c) you are capable of doing it.

I didn’t intend to alienate anyone, and I’m sorry if I did. My intention was to point out that their laws are different – our conception of secularism wouldn’t result in this situation. Isn’t it a fascinating question about how to protect religious liberty though?

The law itself is from 2003, and was far too long for me to read all the way through. If you have any insight into it, I’d love to hear what you know about it. Thanks!

Certainly I wouldn’t take a job that interfered with my beliefs, if I knew it did (this being easy for me, as I have few). Taking a job which interfered, and then suing them after the fact, would be disingenuous. Sounds like Christian pharmacists. But not traveling by airplane seems like something one could get around. There could very easily be more to this story. As in, he sounds like a prat, whom it’s possible no one wanted around.

I had a sh*t job once that wouldn’t let me take one day off, when I asked 4 weeks ahead of time. I had a friend coming in town, and wanted to spend a day with her. So I waited two weeks, and gave my notice. Jerks.

Miko, your comment is capitalistic, as I’m reading it. As in, government shouldn’t be involved in telling business what to do. Maybe you’re right, and maybe it’s completely ridiculous to call belief in climate change “religious”/covered under beliefs/however they put it exactly.

I think applied law is fascinating, and I don’t know where the line should be drawn with courts vs. business, etc. There are bound to be silly cases on the border of that line, wherever it is drawn.

This seems more like the employer refusing to give someone a day off for a religious holiday, and then firing them, which is (in USA) and should be illegal.

I’m not sure I agree that that should necessarily be illegal. There are businesses which take a substantial part of their annual income in a period of just a few weeks, or even just a few days. It is understood in such businesses that during that period you do not take days off, and it would be entirely reasonable if someone was sacked for doing so.

But of course any such situation should be made clear at the time someone is hired. Similarly, if someone insists that they be allowed to take days off at particular times – whether for religious reasons or not – they should say that at the time they are hired.

Thinking up an imaginary Quaker hangman is taking a logical point to its illogical conclusion…some type of fallacy, forget the name.

It’s called reductio ad absurdum, but it’s actually not a fallacy; it’s a valid logical principle and extremely important epistemic technique.

You might be thinking of the slippery slope fallacy, but for that to apply you’d need to demonstrate that the two situation have an essential difference, which in this case they don’t.

Some people are extremely afraid of flying, would they be fired? Would that be okay?

No, the fear itself probably isn’t a problem; they’d only be fired if they let that fear get in the way of doing it. In that case, it would be perfectly okay to fire them. By firing them, their employer is doing them a favor by allowing them to find work in an area where their mental hangups don’t prevent them from doing the work they want to be paid to do.

I guess for me the question of whether this ruling is a good one hinges on whether or not it is a necessary part of his job to travel by air (if he is a professor who would rather travel by car, it seems silly not to give him that accomodation).

First off, it may not be silly. Traveling long distances by car takes a significantly longer amount of time and may inconvenience all those who work with him.

Second off, even if it is silly, there’s no law against making silly or even stupid choices. If your employer feels that you contribute something of value equal to or greater than your salary, they’ll keep you employed. If they feel that dealing with you involves more costs than benefits, they’ll fire you. In practice, reasonable accommodation will be made because the transaction costs associated with hiring a new employee will make keeping an existing one desirable. But it’s ultimately up to them to decide whether what is asked is reasonable or not. Just as we have the right to not fly, we have the right to not hire people who refuse to fly. If they decide that keeping him on payroll is not worthwhile, for whatever reason, then the courts should have no authority to override that decision, just as the courts should have no authority to force an employee who wants to quit to keep a job nonetheless.

Try not to alienate your British readers by saying “I know they do things differently ‘across the pond’” – last time I checked, the UK was a lot more tolerant to atheists than the US.

Besides, he was only given the ability to take his case to court. He could easily use the case. Every case is different from the next, it’s not like every person can get away with this now.

I actually like the fact that they’re comparing other beliefs to religious beliefs now. People could easily say his beliefs dont matter because they arent religious or cultural…but now they’re getting some sort of respect.

maybe his job really was discriminating him for his beliefs…