Can your religion legally excuse you from doing part of your job? This is one of the questions in the Kentucky County Clerk marriage certificate case. But it also arises in lots of other cases — for instance, the Muslim flight attendant who doesn’t want to serve alcohol and who filed a complaint on Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the airline’s denial of an exemption.

The question has also arisen before with regard to:

1. Nurses who had religious objections to being involved in abortions (even just to washing instruments that would be used in abortions);
2. Pacifist postal workers who had religious objections to processing draft registration forms;
3. A Jehovah’s Witness employee who had religious objections to raising a flag, which was a task assigned to him;
4. An IRS employee who had religious objections to working on tax exemption applications for organizations that promote “abortion, … homosexuality, worship of the devil, euthanasia, atheism, legalization of marijuana, immoral sexual experiments, sterilization or vasectomies, artificial contraception, and witchcraft”;
5. a philosophically vegetarian bus driver who refused to hand out hamburger coupons as part of an agency’s promotion aimed at boosting ridership;
6. and more.

And of course it arises routinely when people are fine with their job tasks, but have a religious objection to doing them on particular days (e.g., Saturdays and Fridays after sundown).

Under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act, both public and private employers have a duty to exempt religious employees from generally applicable work rules, so long as this won’t create an “undue hardship,” meaning more than a modest cost, on the employer. If the employees can be accommodated in a way that would let the job still get done without much burden on the employer, coworkers, and customers — for instance by switching the employee’s assignments with another employee or by otherwise slightly changing the job duties — then the employer must accommodate them. (The Muslim flight attendant I mentioned above, for instance, claims that she has always been able to work out arrangements under which the other flight attendant serves the alcohol instead of her.)

Read the article “When Does Your Religion Legally Excuse You from Doing Part of Your Job?” on washingtonpost.com.