Do you have a right to worship wherever and whenever you want to worship?

[BurtWorm]

For example, do you have the right to worship in the office? Say you need to bow to your god for ten minutes beginning at precisely 1:23 every afternoon. Should your boss *have* to excuse you from any meetings that might be occurring at 1:23? In other words, should worship be considered something like a disability your employer must reasonably accommodate? Or is it more like smoking, in which you must accommodate your needs to your boss's (and fellow co-workers') needs.

Now what if you are a federal employee? Does your "boss" have the obligation to accommodate your needs for worship? What if your need for worship includes prayer meetings or proselytizing in the workplace?

PS: These questions stem from a discussion in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3482930

[Common Sense Party]

1. No.

Wherever and whenever?

Try worshiping in my living room at 4:00 in the morning and you'll soon see you do not have the right.

I can worship God anywhere I want, whenever I want, but no one else will even know I am doing so. God knows what's in my heart.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. I think this is a matter of established law

"Reasonable Accommodation" has been argued for decades, and there is a body of case law in most legal systems to deal with it.

I'm not a lawyer or legal scholar, but it should not be too difficult to find relevant arguments and decisions.

--p!

[kestrel91316]

3. Your religious rights end where another person's body begins, for one thing.

And people have the right to be left alone, so proselytizing wherever and whenever you damned well please is gonna get you in hot water PDQ.

And in the workplace, unless you are on break, you need to be doing your assigned work rather than promoting your own agenda. Your boss is paying for your time, energy, and attention and unless you have specific ok to do otherwise, you'd best WORK when at work.

[notesdev]

4. You have the right to worship as you please

And your employer has the right to fire you if it interferes with his business. This applies just the same to a Christian pharmacist who won't fill prescriptions he doesn't like, an observant Jew who takes a job that requires him to work Friday night and/or Saturday, or a Muslim who interrupts business activities regularly with a requirement to stop to pray five times a day.

If your religion interferes with your job, find a job that doesn't conflict with it. That is your right.

You do not have the right to force others to accommodate you. Otherwise I am going to start claiming that my religion requires any young, nubile 20-something females in my presence to walk around stark naked and drunk as a skunk, and for my employer to hire nothing but nymphomaniac alcoholics to meet the requirements of my deity Bacchus that I maximize my proximity to such women.

[knitter4democracy]

5. This is how I always understood the law.

Things get sticky if a business has always accomodated an employee's beliefs and then changes or stops. I remember there was a woman who worked at Meijers in Grand Rapids a couple of years back who had refused for years to work on Sunday with no problem. Then, she got a new manager who refused to let her not work on Sunday. She won, if I remember right, because they'd already established the accomodation.

[notesdev]

6. It's probably a little different

if there's already a longstanding pattern of having proved that the religious practice does not interfere with the job, then there's a valid claim that the job conditions were changed in order to exclude the worker for the religious practice, rather than the exclusion being fundamental to the nature of the job itself.

[knitter4democracy]

7. True.

Most religious accomodations, I think, are pretty easy. I know that, when Hubby was in medical school, they were fine with people taking a day for religious reasons, as there were students from almost every religion. Orthodox Jews didn't work on the Sabbath, either, and if they can do that in a hospital (where they work everyone like a dog), I'd think most businesses could find a way to accomdate most requests.

[Occam Bandage]

8. If it does not unreasonably interfere with your job duties, yes.