The US government is suing a school district, in Chicago, for denying a Muslin teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Yes, you read it right; not the NAACP, the US government!
Adult Muslims are supposed to make such trip at least once in a lifetime if they are physically and financially able to. Hence, I fail to see the big emergency. But at any rate, these kinds of headlines make us look like the world fools. Only in America!
What about the separation of church and state?
Here is Poppy’s solution to another false problem, which will cost us millions we don’t have in useless legal expense. Let’s legislate: (4 lines)
TITLE: Religion interference with workplace.
“When the practice of your religion interferes with your job schedule or job description, you can either adjust the religious practice, or leave your job. It is perfectly OK for you to find your religion idiot-syncracies to be more important than your job. In which case, it is OK for your employer to legally fire your ass.”
(I am confident your organized church will provide you with the ability to create income…)
US sues school over denial of Muslim pilgrimage
WASHINGTON – The federal government sued a suburban Chicago school district Monday for denying a Muslim middle school teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca that is a central part of her religion.
In a civil rights case, the department said the school district in Berkeley, Ill., denied the request of Safoorah Khan on grounds that her requested leave was unrelated to her professional duties and was not set forth in the contract between the school district and the teachers union. In doing so the school district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate her religious practices, the government said.
Khan wanted to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia which every adult Muslim is supposed to make at least once in a lifetime if they are physically and financially able to. Millions go each year.
Khan started as a middle school teacher for Berkeley School District 87 — about 15 miles west of Chicago — in 2007. In 2008, she asked for almost three weeks of unpaid leave to perform the Hajj. After the district twice denied her request, Khan wrote the board that "based on her religious beliefs, she could not justify delaying performing hajj," and resigned shortly thereafter, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago.
Berkeley School District compelled Khan to choose between her job and her religious beliefs, the lawsuit said.
The government asked the court to order the school district to adopt policies that reasonably accommodate its employees' religious practices and beliefs, and to reinstate Khan with back pay and also pay her compensatory damages.
In November 2008, Khan filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which found reasonable cause that discrimination had occurred and forwarded the matter to the Justice Department. The case is the first brought by department in a project to ensure vigorous enforcement of the 1964 act against state and local governments by improving cooperation between the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the department's civil rights division.
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