Religious Harassment

Although religious harassment resembles sexual and other forms of illegal harassment in some ways, it is unique in at least one critical respect. Unlike sexual harassment, the act that may constitute religious harassment--one employee’s expression of religious belief in opposition to another’s--is also imbued with a degree of legal protection. Simply put, employees, including supervisors, have a legal right to talk about their religious faith at work and to do so in an assertive, even strident, manner. An employer that summarily silences the religious employee’s workplace speech or activity does so at its peril. A case in point is Brown v. Polk County, Iowa, 61 F.3d 650 (8th Cir. 1995). Isaiah Brown, an African-American man and self-described born-again Christian, served as the director of information services for the county government. In performing his duties, Brown frequently engaged in spontaneous prayer, made affirmations of his Christianity and cited Bible passages when addressing his employees. The county determined that Brown’s religious proselytization was causing a coercive atmosphere for his employees and was hurting the morale of the department. Brown therefore was reprimanded and ordered to remove all religious items from his office, even down to the Bible on his desk, and to "cease any activities that could be considered to be religious proselytizing, witnessing or counseling." Later, Brown was fired. The 8th Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the county as to Brown's race discrimination claim, but reversed and remanded for trial his religious discrimination claims under Title VII, holding that by the county's own admission, it had discharged Brown at least in part because of his protected religious expression at work.