Employers can verify religious requests.

Byline: ON THE JOB by Bureau of Labor and Industries For The Register-Guard

Question: Last week, our employee William told his supervisor that he did not want to be off work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (both are company holidays for us), but that instead he needed the Friday after Christmas off for his religious observance of the Beheading of John the Baptist, the following Monday off for the Nativity of Mary and Tuesday off for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This employee has never made a religious request before, and the supervisor suspects that he will actually be taking a long weekend for a fishing trip, but she granted William the leave anyway. Since this kind of request may come up again, what are our obligations as an employer when an employee makes this kind of request? Is there anything we can do to ensure that requests such as William's are really related to an employee's religion and not just to opening day of a fishing or hunting season?

Answer: You're required to make reasonable accommodations for the sincerely held religious beliefs of an employee, but you do have the right to some verification when an employee makes a special request based on religion. Oregon civil rights laws and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit discrimination based on an employee's religion and require you to "reasonably accommodate" religious beliefs and practices unless you can show that doing so will result in "undue hardship."

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that employers must attempt to accommodate an employee's belief that is religious in nature and sincerely held even if the religion is nontraditional or one you haven't heard of before. When an employee makes a religious request, your first step should be to engage in an interactive process to discuss the employee's religious needs and consider the potential options for accommodation.

Since your supervisor already approved William's time off, your best bet is to give the employee the benefit of the doubt. Of course, he may indeed have been fibbing - and planning on going fishing. We're no experts on Christian feasts and holidays, but our research indicates that this year, the named holy days fall on Aug. 29, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14, respectively.

The dates don't match up, though it's possible that William's religion recognizes these events on different dates. This is the kind of situation in which a letter from William's chief cleric would have been beneficial. You have the right to request an employee to provide you a letter from his or her priest (or minister or rabbi) to verify the employee's religion and clarify whether it's a tenet of that religion that he or she may not perform work on particular days.

You are not required to pay William for the days he requests to be off for religious observance; nor are you required to allow him to work on company-designated holidays (in William's case Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) in exchange for his preferred religious days off. You may, however, at the company's discretion, choose to allow William to substitute his religious days off for other company holidays if it is feasible to have an employee work on a day when you are closed.

You're not obligated to accommodate requests that are based merely on an employee's personal preference, even if the request is motivated by the employee's religious beliefs. If, for example, an employee requests days off to attend a religious revival, crusade, rally, seminar or weekend spiritual workshop, you should evaluate the request according to your usual company policy regarding time off. You are not obligated to analyze such requests as requests for religious accommodation.

If an employee's religion in fact prohibits him or her from working on particular days, you must determine whether it would be a reasonable accommodation or an undue hardship to grant a request for time off. You should take into consideration the size of your company, the nature of the work performed, the availability of other employees to perform the work and the cost involved in granting the request.

On The Job is written by the staff of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Contact BOLI at [phone], or BOLI, 800 N.E. Oregon St. No. 32, Portland, OR 97232.