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An employee who was obligated to take an ethics course that included transgender-harassment training, which required answering questions in ways that he disagreed with on religious grounds, could proceed with a failure-to-accommodate lawsuit, a federal district court decided.

In July 2004, the employee was hired by Payce Inc. as a software engineer. Prior to 2017, Payce became a subsidiary and an affiliate of Deluxe Corp., a Minnesota corporation. Deluxe took control of day-to-day operations at Payce, including the management of its employees.

The employee claimed that in March 2017, Deluxe required him and other employees to take an online ethics-compliance course, which required employees to respond to multiple-choice questions. He asserted that his Christian beliefs did not allow him to choose the answers required by the course.

When the employee entered his choices to the question labeled "bad behavior," relating to transgender issues, the course did not accept his choices. The course provided a hypothetical example in which "Alex" is a man but desires to become a woman. According to the employee, the course indicated that Deluxe expected employees to use the pronoun "her" to refer to Alex, and not "him." The course refused to allow the employee to continue and did not allow him to skip the question.

Thereafter, the employee requested that he be excused from completing the ethics-compliance course as an accommodation to his religious beliefs. Deluxe denied his request. The employee told Deluxe that his religious beliefs did not allow him to choose the answers required by Deluxe's course.

In January 2018, Deluxe advised the employee that he would receive a 1 percent salary reduction as a disciplinary action for failing to complete the course. Thereafter, in April 2018, Deluxe directed Payce to terminate the employee. The employee filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the EEOC issued a dismissal and notice-of-suit rights to him.

The employee filed an employment-discrimination case in federal court under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Deluxe, alleging that he was disciplined and then fired from his job because of discrimination based on religion. The complaint alleged religious discrimination and failure to accommodate the employee's religious beliefs. The employee sought reinstatement and damages, including back pay, front pay, emotional-distress damages, and attorney fees and costs.

[SHRM members-only toolkit: Accommodating Religion, Belief and Spirituality in the Workplace]

Deluxe filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the employee had not stated any plausible claims. Under Title VII's religious accommodation requirements, an employer must reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs unless doing so would create an undue hardship. Deluxe argued that excusing the employee from the anti-harassment course would have been unduly burdensome because of its obligations to ensure equal employment opportunities and equal treatment for all employees.

In support of this contention, Deluxe cited several cases in which courts have found that Title VII protects transgender employees from discrimination based upon gender identity, and it further noted that the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.

The court dismissed the employee's disparate treatment religious-discrimination claim because the complaint contained insufficient allegations to show that Deluxe had treated him differently from other employees because of his religious beliefs. Yet the court denied the motion to dismiss the employee's failure-to-accommodate claim. While Deluxe argued that it had legitimate business reasons for mandating the training, the employee argued that the court could not weigh the merits of the claim at the motion-to-dismiss stage, and the court agreed.

Brennan v. Deluxe Corp., D. Md., No. 1:18-cv-02119 (Jan. 18, 2019).

Professional Pointer: Employers should remember that strict anti-harassment training based on sexual orientation and transgender status may impact the religious freedoms of some employees. As this case shows, employers may be required to offer accommodations to employees who object on religious grounds to the content of such training.

Jeffrey Rhodes is an attorney with Doumar Martin in Arlington, Va.