Video: Religious Rights Law

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COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI)–The U. S. Supreme Court sends down a ruling that could have local implications in civil rights protection of job applicants or employees needing special accommodations in the workplace for their religious beliefs.

A Columbus attorney is reminding us that Mississippi is an employment at will state.

“You can walk in the door one day and you know if the bossman or bosswoman doesn’t like what they are seeing they can terminate your employment. Now there may be some consequences on the other side of that,” said Bruce Johnson/CPI Group.

“Which means you could hire or not hire someone or terminate someone for a good reason, bad reason, or no reason. Unless its a reason prohibited by some other law,” said Taylor Smith/Veteran Attorney.

Like in the recent case where a federal law sided with a muslim woman wearing a religious headdress, seeking employment at retail giant Abercrombie & Fitch, was not hired.

“Whether its hiring, firing, failure to promote or demote. Any adverse employment decision thats because of someone’s race, sex, or religion as so far as Title 7 is concerned would be illegal,” said Taylor Smith.

Given the fact that federal law supercedes or trumps state law, the thin line of reasoning comes to bare in the case of the rights of the business owner and the worker seeking or retaining employment.

“It can’t put undo burden on either the business you are working for or the other coworkers in the establishment so they would have to communicate to the place they are applying prior to them coming on board,” said Bruce Johnson.

When referring to religious rights, keep in mind the term has become much broader than dealing with an employee that happens to be a Christian.

“Doesn’t matter what the color, ethnicity, religion, none of those things matter if they can go on line and go through our application process they become an applicant of the CPI Group,” said Bruce Johnson.

In an 8 to 1 decision the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the muslim job applicant sighting that the business did not make accommodations for her religion….even though she didn’t ask she was awarded $20 million dollars in damages.

Categories: Local News

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