Play us in Keith Richards…

Last month, the EEOC announced here that it had sued two companies, claiming that they violated federal law by failing to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs:

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, Beverly R. Butcher, Jr. had worked as a general inside laborer at the companies’ mine in Mannington, W.V., for over 35 years when the mining companies required employees to use a newly installed biometric hand scanner to track employee time and attendance. Butcher repeatedly told mining officials that submitting to a biometric hand scanner violated his sincerely held religious beliefs as an Evangelical Christian. He also wrote the mining superintendent and human resources manager a letter explaining the relationship between hand-scanning technology and the Mark of the Beast and antichrist discussed in the Book of Revelation of the New Testament and requesting an exemption from the hand scanning based on his religious beliefs.

In the complaint filed in federal court in West Virginia, the EEOC claims that the two employers refused to consider other ways to track Butcher’s time and attendance, “such as allowing him to submit manual time records as he had done previously or reporting to his supervisor, even though the mining company had made similar exceptions to the hand scanning for two employees with missing fingers.”

This case serves as a reminder for employers that even though an employee’s religious beliefs may seem strange, as long as those beliefs are sincerely held, the law requires that employers accommodate them absent undue hardship.

(h/t Donna Ballman @employeeatty)