Compliance Stuff

Quick Hits Workers who are Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist will mark religious celebrations in December 2025. Employers must grant valid religious accommodation requests unless it would impose a substantial burden on the business. In considering  time off requests , employers balance business demands with legal obligations. Employees might ask for time off or breaks for religious observances or to complete prayers at designated times. Typical religious accommodations during the holiday season include telework, flexible scheduling, shift adjustments or swapping, and exceptions to the dress code . One example of accommodating time off for religious reasons is when non-Christian employees agree to work on Christian holidays, or non-Jewish employees agree to work on Jewish holidays, allowing staffing levels to remain adequate for the business. Some employees do not drink alcohol for religious reasons, so companies hosting holiday parties may want to make attendance voluntar y an...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) is poised to elevate its focus on religious discrimination in the workplace and employers should be alert. With its newly restored quorum allowing Acting Chair Andrea Lucas to move forward with more aggressive enforcement, the agency is expected to pursue a broader litigation agenda emphasizing religious accommodation rights under Title VII. In 2025 alone, the EEOC filed 11 religious discrimination suits, the highest in nearly a decade . Lucas credited the agency’s “tremendous wins” in defending religious liberty and signaled that this momentum will continue. What This Means for Employers The EEOC’s direction marks a clear shift towards faith-based accommodation enforcement following the Supreme Court’s decision in  Groff v. DeJoy,  600 U.S. 447 (2023). Under  Groff,  employers must grant religious accommodations unless doing so would cause substantial increased costs or undue hardship. This standard sets a much...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has released an advisory  memorandum opinion  making clear that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 may require the federal government to provide “situational telework” to its employees as a religious accommodation. This development is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to expand religious protections in the workplace . Although the memorandum opinion focuses on religious rights in the federal government workplace, private-sector employers also may wish to consider situational telework (or “telecommuting”) as a religious accommodation. Quick Hits Existing guidance on religion in the federal workplace largely remains intact, but federal employers now face a higher standard to demonstrate undue hardship when denying requests for religious accommodation. Situational telework can be a reasonable religious accommodation, but it is not an automatic entitlement, the DOJ stated in a recent memorandum opinion prepared for EEOC ...