Charee Stanley, an American flight attendant and recent convert to Islam, just filed a discrimination complaint against her employer, ExpressJet, because it won’t excuse her from serving alcohol to passengers. Stanley’s backers at the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) say that for a time Stanley worked out an arrangement for other attendants to handle liquor serving duties, but it broke down.
Stanley’s scruples about screwpulls instantly drew the attention of culture warriors, who after a whole week spent bickering about defiant Kentucky clerk Kim Davis — in terms of online controversy, practically a Thirty Years’ War — pivoted deftly to the Stanley case and away from Davis’s refusal to license same-sex marriage as her job requires her to.…
Here’s the thing: The EEOC has already sided with Muslim employees who wish to avoid handling alcohol. In 2013 the commission sued the Star Transport Co. in Illinois for failing to provide a reasonable accommodation to two Muslim truck drivers when it dismissed them for refusing to haul booze, a case that appears still to be pending.
More here. With religious accommodation in the workplace so much in the news, I’ve recently written four pieces on the subject, including my post last week in this space about the Kim Davis case (see also Ilya Shapiro’s). I’ve also written a lengthy essay on EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch, the hijab-accommodation case, for the forthcoming Cato Supreme Court Review, which I’ll be discussing at Cato’s Constitution Day next week (September 17). Previously in this space I’ve related issues such as government accommodation of religiously-based adoption and foster care agencies, and the wars under state anti-discrimination laws over cake-baking and related wedding services.
Finally, at Newsweek, just out, I’ve written an extended analysis of the problems with what is called the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), a current social-conservative priority:
FADA as currently drafted isn’t really an accommodation law. It’s an our-guys-win law. It says that even if the government has set you up as the monopoly provider of some service or gatekeeper for some permission, you may use that monopoly or gatekeeper status against same-sex couples and their interests with entire impunity.
Should Republicans really be rushing to endorse this bill?
Dale Carpenter at Volokh Conspiracy has further thoughts on the potential constitutional infirmities of the bill, along with kind words for my article.
