Tolerance requires common sense, compromise

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/03/2011 (5579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Safoorah Khan began work as a math teacher for the Berkeley, Ill., public schools in November 2007. Nine months later, Khan, a Muslim, asked to be off the first three school weeks of December 2008 so she could fulfil her religious duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. School officials refused, saying they couldn’t do without her at that time of the year. Khan quit, took the trip and hired a lawyer — and now the Obama administration has taken her side, filing a lawsuit against the Berkeley schools for religious discrimination.

According to the justice department’s complaint, the school system “compelled Khan to choose between her job and her religious observance, practice, and/or belief… thus forcing her discharge.”

In so doing, the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is trying to show the U.S. government will not tolerate unlawful discrimination against Muslims, which is laudable. The question, however, is whether the justice department’s civil rights division is enforcing existing employment discrimination law — or stretching it. Civil rights law requires employers to reasonably accommodate their workers’ religious beliefs or practices, as long as they don’t impose more than a minimal burden on the employer’s operations. Common accommodations include permitting employees to wear religious headgear or arranging voluntary shift swaps with co-workers on the Sabbath.

Claims such as Khan’s, in which employees seek multiple consecutive days off to meet religious obligations, are rare but not unknown. Members of the Worldwide Church of God, which observes an annual pilgrimage of eight to 10 days, have filed several such lawsuits, sometimes backed by the federal government. They have won some and lost some. In all religious accommodation cases, the results depend heavily on the particular facts; courts delve into arcane matters of shift-sharing and seniority rights. None of the Church of God precedents seems precisely comparable to Khan’s case, which involves a longer pilgrimage — but one that must take place only once in a lifetime.

This history suggests Khan’s claim is not frivolous — and that this small-town school district was hardly in a position to know it might be violating well-established law if it turned down her request. Now, a court will have to examine what it would have cost the Berkeley schools, in money and inconvenience, to meet her request. And it will have to determine why Khan, who is 29, absolutely could not wait to perform her once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage.

By backing Khan, the Obama administration may be striking a blow for civil rights and religious freedom, risking a polarizing controversy such as the one over construction of a mosque near New York’s Ground Zero — or both. If only this could have been resolved without the cost and drama of litigation. Could Berkeley schools have turned Khan down for the coming school year but promised her time off during the next one?

If they had done that, could Khan have shown more flexibility toward an employer that does not seem especially intolerant? Court rulings can define the legal rights and responsibilities of Muslims and non-Muslims. But common sense and compromise can bring them together.