The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Federal agency, has issued a ruling requiring employers who refuse to hire a person because of his religious beliefs, to prove that they would have faced undue hardship by hiring him. The ruling, which mainly concerns Orthodox Jews, was handed down after a yearlong study of complaints alleging discrimination by employers against Jews who refused to work on the Sabbath or on religious holidays.
The ruling contained guidelines concerning the observance of the Sabbath and religious holidays as they relate to job discrimination. The ruling noted that the Civil Rights Law of 1964 included an obligation on the employer to “make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employes and prospective employes where such accommodations can be made without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”
The guidelines stressed that “because of the particularly sensitive nature of discharging or refusing to hire an employee or applicant on account of his religious beliefs, the employer has the burden of proving that an undue hardship renders the required accommodations to the religious needs of the employee unreasonable.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
