{"id":2283,"date":"2008-02-08T23:59:15","date_gmt":"2008-02-09T04:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/workplace_relig\/"},"modified":"2008-02-08T23:59:15","modified_gmt":"2008-02-09T04:59:15","slug":"workplace_relig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/02\/workplace_relig\/","title":{"rendered":"Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Next Tuesday the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions is scheduled to hold hearings on the <a href=\"http:\/\/thomas.loc.gov\/cgi-bin\/query\/z?c110:H.R.1431:\">Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2007 ( H. R. 1431)<\/a>.<br \/>\nThis important legislation promotes the free exercise of religion by strengthening workplace protection of employee&#8217;s right to follow his or her religious beliefs.  Specifically, it amends Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require that employers &#8220;reasonably accommodate&#8221; employee&#8217;s religious practices, so long as this does not create an &#8220;undue hardship&#8221; for the employer.<br \/>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religiousliberty.info\/\">North American Religious Liberty Association<\/a> has <a href=\"http:\/\/religiousliberty.rapidhost.net\/site\/1\/docs\/wrfainfo.pdf\">a nice information pack on the WRFA<\/a> (.pdf).  Of note, the pamphlet sites a disturbing U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report that between 1993 and 2003, workplace claims of religious discrimination shot up 82%.<br \/>\nYou can send letters in support of this bill to your Representative and Senators <a href=\"http:\/\/capwiz.com\/narla\/issues\/alert\/?alertid=9490921&#038;type=CO\">by filling out a form here<\/a>.<br \/>\nUPDATE:  In response to my letter (submitted at the above website) Senator Corker&#8217;s office e-mails, in part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I agree with you that religious freedom is a fundamental American right and that no American worker should be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs. I look forward to reviewing this legislation, and, should it come before the full Senate, I will certainly take your thoughts on this issue into consideration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve not yet received a response from Senator Alexander or Representative Duncan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2008\/02\/workplace_relig\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2007\"><p>Next Tuesday the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions is scheduled to hold hearings on the Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2007 ( H. R. 1431). This important legislation promotes the free exercise of religion by strengthening workplace protection of employee&#8217;s right to follow his or her religious beliefs. Specifically, it amends [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}