Employer Not Required to Accommodate Trucker Who Refused to Make Overnight Drives With Women
 
March 1, 2000
 

The Fifth Circuit recently held that the termination of a trucker who refused to make overnight drives with women truckers due to his religious beliefs was not employment discrimination on the basis of religion in violation of Title VII because the employer would incur undue hardship in accommodating the employee's religious beliefs.

In Weber v. Roadway Express, Inc., (5th Cir. January 7, 2000), Roadway Express hired Weber for a position as a truck driver. About two weeks after Weber was hired, Weber discovered that Roadway employed female truck drivers for overnight, two-driver trips. Weber informed his supervisor that he could not accept any overnight drives with female truckers as partners because of his religious beliefs. Weber's supervisor responded that working with female drivers was part of the job and that Weber would be terminated if he could not accept any overnight drives with female drivers. Soon thereafter, Weber filed suit against Roadway, alleging that Roadway failed to accommodate his religious beliefs in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of religion. An employer has a statutory obligation to make reasonable accommodations for the religious observances of its employees, but the employer is not required to incur "undue hardship," which exists if an employer is required to bear more than a de minimus cost.

To prove a case of religious discrimination under Title VII, a plaintiff must show that he had a bona fide religious belief that conflicted with a job requirement, that he informed the employer of his belief and that he was terminated for failing to comply with the conflicting job requirement. Rather, Roadway argued that it would incur undue hardship if it were forced to accommodate Weber's request that he could not accept overnight drives with female drivers.

The court found that Roadway would incur undue hardship if it tried to accommodate Weber's request. Specifically, the court found that skipping over Weber when he would be paired with woman drivers was more than a de minimus expense because it would unduly burden Weber's co-workers.

Additionally, the court determined that Roadway's hypothetical situations concerning the effects of such an accommodation were not too remote or unlikely to accurately reflect the costs of accommodation and that Roadway was not required to wait to feel the effects of Weber's proposal to skip him by instituting the accommodation.

The court also found that Weber's suggestion that he easily could be accommodated because other drivers were skipped routinely for various secular reasons was not de minimus because other drivers were skipped only when business circumstances dictated, whereas Weber's accommodation would be inflexible and would impact other employees.

Finally, Weber argued that Roadway was not entitled to summary judgment because it failed to make a good faith effort to accommodate him; however, the court determined that a good faith effort is not mandated if the company can show that any accommodation would impose an undue burden.

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