October 14, 2025
When Worlds Collide: When Reasonable Accommodation Discriminates
An employee was an HVAC Technician and a devout Christian. One tenet of his faith was that he should not be alone with a woman who was not his wife. When his employer hired the first female HVAC Technician, he asked for a religious accommodation that he not be assigned to go out on service calls with just her. His supervisor agreed to but never implemented that accommodation.
When he reminded his supervisor about his request for the accommodation, he was subsequently informed by the company’s HR representative that he was being put on administrative leave. When he asked why, he was reportedly told “the reason [can] not be disclosed.” Eleven days later, the employee was fired for “insubordination for refusal to work with another employee.” He then sued for discrimination and failure to provide reasonable accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as well as state law claims.
The lawsuit alleges that since there were 16 HVAC technicians in the employee’s unit and he was one of 25-30 working at that location, “assigning another technician to work with the new female technician in his place would not have caused Defendant undue hardship.”
Stay tuned for the outcome. In the interim, cases like this raise the issue of how an employer should balance competing interests.
- If the female Technician was reassigned to work with other Techs despite some objection she might have, or that the coworkers had, would that have raised a potential claim that she was being subjected to sex discrimination?
- What if an employee needs a service animal in the workplace but that poses a medical risk to an employee with an allergy?
- What if an employee’s need for religious accommodation adversely impacts a coworker based on the coworker’s gender identity?
When these conflicts arise, respectful and interactive dialogue with each employee can go a long way to resolving these conflicts. That combined with guidance from your company’s employment counsel can help avoid cases like this.
