Keeping the Faith but Losing in Court: Legal Implications of Proselytizing in the Workplace

Proselytizing at work occurs when an employee tries to convince coworkers to change their religions. This presents an interesting set of legal issues, because some employees feel that proselytizing is a requirement of their religion. Therefore, they could perceive a prohibition on proselytizing at w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEmployee responsibilities and rights journal Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 105 - 112
Main Authors Rudin, Joel P., Harshman, Ellen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer Nature B.V 01.06.2004
Subjects
Americans with Disabilities Act 1990-US
Bible
Civil rights
Civil Rights Act 1964-US
Cost control
Discrimination
Employee complaints
Employers
Employment
Evangelism
Harassment
Human resource management
Litigation
Meetings
Religion
Religious discrimination
Sexual harassment
State court decisions
Supervisors
Work environment
United States > US
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Summary:Proselytizing at work occurs when an employee tries to convince coworkers to change their religions. This presents an interesting set of legal issues, because some employees feel that proselytizing is a requirement of their religion. Therefore, they could perceive a prohibition on proselytizing at work as a discriminatory act against members of their religion. On the other hand, other employees may be offended by attempts to change their religious practices. These employees could perceive workplace proselytizing as religious harassment. Therefore, American employers have to adopt religious harassment policies that are much more complex than their sexual harassment policies. In this paper, we outline the components of a legally compliant religious harassment policy which balances the competing rights of proselytizers and their intended targets. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0892-7545
1573-3378
DOI:10.1023/B:ERRJ.0000023181.62308.14