29 C.F.R. § 1605.1

“Religious” nature of a practice or belief

Read at: eCFRecfr.gov CornellLII GovInfogovinfo.gov CasesGoogle Scholar

In most cases whether or not a practice or belief is religious is not at issue. However, in those cases in which the issue does exist, the Commission will define religious practices to include moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views. This standard was developed in United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965) and Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333 (1970). The Commission has consistently applied this standard in its decisions. 1 The fact that no religious group espouses such beliefs or the fact that the religious group to which the individual professes to belong may not accept such belief will not determine whether the belief is a religious belief of the employee or prospective employee. The phrase “religious practice” as used in these Guidelines includes both religious observances and practices, as stated in section 701(j), 42 U.S.C. 2000e(j).

1 See CD 76-104 (1976), CCH ¶ 6500; CD 71-2620 (1971), CCH ¶ 6283; CD 71-779 (1970), CCH ¶ 6180.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 134 cases (63 in the last 5 years), 1972–2026 · leading case: Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63 (1977).
Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63 (1977). · cites it 16× “At the time of the events involved here, a guideline of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 29 CFR § 1605.1 (b) (1968), required, as the Act itself now does, 42 U.”
Danny R. Smith v. Pyro Mining Co., 827 F.2d 1081 (6th Cir. 1987). · cites it 8× “The EEOC subsequently revised these regulations and stated that Title VII included “an obligation on the part of the employer to make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees .”
Lois Davis v. Fort Bend Cnty., 765 F.3d 480 (5th Cir. 2014). · cites it 5× “, 29 C.F.R. § 1605.1 (citing United States v.”
Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023). · cites it 2× “” 29 CFR § 1605.1 (a)(2) (1967). After some tinkering, the EEOC settled on a formulation Page Proof Pending Publication that obligated employers “to make reasonable accommoda- tions to the religious needs of employees” whenever that would not work an “undue hardship on the…”
Maine Human Rights Comm'n v. Local 1361, United Paperworkers Int'l Union AFL-CIO, 383 A.2d 369 (Me. 1978). · cites it 7× “Before considering the Union's argument we face a threshold issue of whether the Union has standing to challenge the guideline, for on its face the administrative interpretation applies only to an employer and not to a labor organization.”
Kumar v. Gate Gourmet, Inc., 325 P.3d 193 (Wash. 2014). · cites it 3× “*497 ¶20 Shortly after Title VII was enacted in 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) promulgated a rule interpreting the statute to require employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious practices.”
Friedman v. S. California Permanente Med. Grp., 125 Cal. Rptr. 2d 663 (Cal. Ct. App. 2002). · cites it 6× “txt (as of Sept. 13, 2002). The claimant alleged the Department of Commerce had retaliated against him “because of his unconventional beliefs about cold fusion and other technologies!)]” (Ibid.”
Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm'n v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., 731 F.3d 1106 (10th Cir. 2013). · cites it 4× “Although courts generally resolve doubts about particular beliefs in favor of finding that they are religious, beliefs are not protected merely because they are strongly held.”
Fallon v. Mercy Catholic Med. Ctr. of Se. Pennsylvania, 877 F.3d 487 (3rd Cir. 2017). “The next sentence of the regulation describes the regulation as adopting the standard in Seeger and Welsh.”
Turner v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 876 P.2d 1022 (Cal. 1994). · cites it 2× “) [1] The EEOC has also issued guidelines for discrimination because of religion ( 29 C.F.R. § 1605.1 et seq. (1993)), but the guidelines for religious discrimination do not appear to define employer responsibility for harassment by coworkers.”
U.S. Equal Emp. Opportunity Comm'n v. Consol Energy, Inc., 860 F.3d 131 (4th Cir. 2017). “" 29 C.F.R. § 1605.1 . 4 . We also agree with the district court that the evidence at trial was sufficient to support a finding of deliberateness under our prior precedent, which allowed deliberateness to be inferred at least in part from "a complete failure to accommodate, in…”
Larry G. Hardison, Appellant, v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., Et Al., Appellees, 527 F.2d 33 (8th Cir. 1975). · cites it 7× “29 C.F.R. § 1605.1 (a)(3), 31 Fed.Reg. 8370 (1966) .”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.