Washington Nationals being sued for alleged religious discrimnation

The Washington Nationals are being sued for religious discrimination by three former ushers at the ballpark.

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The Washington Nationals are being sued by three former ushers who identify as Seventh Day Adventists. The ushers are claiming that the team discriminated against them for their religious beliefs, according to a story by Hardball Talk. The federal religious discrimination lawsuit was handed down on Tuesday and is for the amount of $300,000, as detailed by Fangraphs. The complaint is that the team discriminated against the three men by not allowing for their religious beliefs. The men were allowed to miss games to observe their Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, but then they were fired when they didn’t end up working 80 percent of the games.

Employers are generally not allowed to discriminate against employees based on their religious beliefs, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act requires that employers reasonably accommodate their employee’s religious beliefs whenever they can. That usually is taken to mean that the employer should allow the employee to take certain days off for observing their religious traditions. This is further expected to mean that it doesn’t cause the company undue hardship, such as forcing other employees to work more hours or the company to hire more employees to cover the one worker’s missing days.

The interesting part of the suit is that it says the team was willing to accommodate the ushers’ beliefs in 2013 and set aside the requirement of working 80 percent of the team’s games. However, they apparently changed this in 2014 and then fired the men for failing to work an adequate amount of games the previous season. The men also say that the team could have easily allowed them the time off because Friday and Saturday evening games are desirable to many ushers who work other jobs.

Based on the information that the Nationals had previously accommodated the men’s beliefs, it looks like it’s a pretty credible suit and one the team might just decide to settle. Being sued for religious discrimination is never a good public relations look. If they defend it, they could try to say that the men were fired for poor performance, though it sounds like they’re saying that they were told that it was the amount of games that was the problem.

It also sounds like the men are hoping to be hired back by the team. In that case, the Nationals could probably just make this go away by rehiring the men for the 2015 MLB season.

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