| Issue: |
Several years ago, your organization developed an employer-sponsored diversity initiative recognizing employee groups, known as "Affinity Groups," organized on the basis of a common social identity. According to your guidelines, Affinity Groups are eligible to receive company resources, including using facilities/equipment for group activities and even funding to support the group's mission. In order to receive Affinity Group status, however, your organization must approve the proposed group's request for registration. Among other things, your guidelines prohibit conferring Affinity Group status on any group that promotes or advocates a religious position. Even so, one of your employees applied for recognition of a Christian Employee Network as an Affinity Group, suggesting it would be interdenominational and would not promote a particular church or religious denomination. You deny the application because the guidelines preclude groups that promote or advocate religious positions. The employee sues, alleging that your organization discriminated against him on the basis of his religion when it denied his request for Affinity Group recognition. Is he successful? |
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Answer: |
No. On similar facts, an employer's decision to decline Affinity Group status to an employee's proposed Christian Employee Network was not impermissible religious discrimination. Because the employer treated all groups with religious positions equally – "it exclude[d] them all from serving as the basis of a company-recognized Affinity Group," noted the federal appellate court – there was no impermissible religious discrimination under Title VII.
At the time of the employee’s application, the employer recognized nine Affinity Groups: people with disabilities; persons of African ancestry; gay and lesbian persons; North American women; Hispanic; Asian Indian; Chinese; Mid-East/South-East Asian; and Veterans.
The employee argued that the refusal to grant Affinity Group status to any group promoting or advocating a religious position meant that the employer treated "nonreligious" employees more favorably than religious employees. Nonetheless, the employer had never recognized an Affinity Group based on any religion position, "even one of religious indifference or opposition to religion," which the employee acknowledged. In fact, the guidelines precluded recognition of Affinity Groups based on "agnosticism, atheism, and secular humanism," or in the employee's terms, a group organized on the basis of "nonreligion."
Despite the fact that the employer recognized Affinity Groups based on race, color, sex, and national origin (the other categories protected by applicable law), that did not necessarily mean that the employer's exclusion of all groups based on religious positions violated discrimination law. There was no legal authority for the employee’s argument that courts should use cross-categorical comparisons when evaluating discrimination claims.
The point of the discrimination laws is avoiding discrimination or disparate treatment. Here, the guidelines treated employees with all religious positions identically: "any employee with any religious position may join any of the recognized Affinity Groups, but the company will not recognize as an Affinity Group a group organized on the basis of a religious position." As a result, no unlawful discrimination was found.
Source: Moranski v General Motors Corp, 7thCir, 87 EPD ¶42,192.
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