Reading this AP release is informative, however only so far. Perhaps just one of the elephant’s legs has been identified. Yet there is looming litigation as the spirit versus the letter of the law is taxed anew.
To me, the legal issues involved here seem to be based on whether the ExpressJet Flight Attendant was a Muslim at the time of her assuming the role as a Flight Attendant.
If she was a Muslim at the time of hire, she appears to be refusing to perform a critical part of her job function and the role of a Flight Attendant in the United States or Europe.
However, if she converted to Islam after assuming her Flight Attendant duties at ExpressJet, she should have considered the job requirements in light of her faith. That would be her responsibility entirely. Making an inquiry to the HR Department at ExpressJet would have been an appropriate step in the process, to at least discover any options.
Reasonable accommodation is a very difficult thing to provide if someone refuses to do a very fundamental duty of the job for which they are employed. Asking other Flight Attendants to serve the liquor places an unnecessary burden on co-workers which may be resented and which probably will cause conflict within a flight team.
So if this Flight Attendant was a Muslim at the time of hire, she has no real basis for refusing to perform her basic work functions. And, if she was a convert after hired as a Flight Attendant, she should have considered the consequences (including applying for a transfer).
These types of situations will occur more and more in Western Nations (Europe and the U.S.) as the establishment attempts to work through the consequences of an unfettered pluralism. I am awaiting the EEOC challenges brought up by gender choice, cases in which an applicant for a job lists their sex as other than what it was at birth, that is biologically.
I can envision cases in which someone listed themselves on an application as “female”, but who is biologically a male, however one whose gender identity is female. Not only will this make the EEOC demographic data almost unreliable, but it may put employers in other hiring binds related to Affirmative Action, diversity policies, etc.
