No Shifts on Shabbos—What are Your Legal Rights?
By Joey Aron, Esq
You have found the perfect nursing job—except it requires shifts on Shabbos. How and when should you broach the issue of your Sabbath observance? And what, if any, obligation does the employer have to accommodate you?
Sabbath observance unquestionably qualifies as a “sincere religious belief,” which means it is protected under the law. The U.S. Supreme Court stated in Thomas v. Review Board of Indiana Employment Security that, “Religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection,” nor may one person’s beliefs be compared to those of others of the same faith. In other words, your prospective employer may not hinge your employment terms on what other Orthodox Jewish nurses do (or do not do) when it comes to Shabbat.
Fortunately for New Yorkers [1], the state’s Executive Law Section 296 offers perhaps the strictest protection of religious rights in the country. Under the statute, an employee (or prospective employee) cannot be forced to violate any “sincerely held practice of his or her religion” as a term or condition of obtaining or retaining employment.
Once the employee raises the issue,
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Joey Aron, Esq, is the founding attorney of Aron Law, PLLC, a boutique law firm in Brooklyn, NY, where he focuses on Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) litigation and matters pertaining to religious discrimination.
When to Disclose Sabbath Observance During the Hiring Process
Imagine for a moment that you are at the tail end of an interview with a nurse manager, and things have been going well. There were no awkward silences, and the nurse manager even smiled and laughed a few times. You are feeling confident until the nurse manager starts explaining the culture of the unit and the demands of the job, including one 12-hour weekend shift (Saturday or Sunday) per month. The nurse manager then asks if you have any issues with the demands of the job.
As a Sabbath-observant Jew, you fear that an employer who learns about an applicant’s need for scheduling accommodations may opt to offer the position to a similarly qualified candidate to avoid the inconvenience. Do you tell the nurse manager that as an observant Jew your religious beliefs prohibit you from working for a 25-hour period between Friday night and Saturday night? Do you simply respond that you have no concerns, since that is technically not a lie because you can work every Sunday? Perhaps you think better of relying on a linguistic loophole knowing you will invariably have to disclose your immovable scheduling conflict, placing your reputation or even your job at risk.
When and whether to disclose your Sabbath observance raises ethical, practical, and legal questions whose answers are complex and situation-specific. Some of the factors to consider include ….
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By: Jack L. Newhouse, a lawyer with Virginia & Ambinder in New York representing workers in a range of employment related matters.