Inside the Exclusive: The EEOC’s New Enforcement Priorities, Part 2—Religious Discrimination, Harassment, and Accommodations

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Tae Phillips: All right, we are back from Colorado Springs, and we’re going to continue with our series of podcasts on the EEOC’s enforcement priorities under the Trump administration.
I’m Tae Phillips from the Birmingham office, and what I’d like to do now is introduce my good friend and colleague, Jim Paul, who’s going to talk to us about the administration’s focus on religious discrimination, anti-Christian bias. Jim, what can you tell us about this hot-button topic?

Jim Paul: Hey, everybody. Yes, religious discrimination, harassment, and religious accommodation has become a hot topic for the EEOC. Similar to what Tae said in the prior segment of this podcast regarding national origin discrimination, I could count on one or two hands how many Christian-based religious accommodation requests or Christian-based discrimination claims there were, but those have steadily increased over the last few years, and it has become a focus of the current presidential administration.
So, back in 2021, 2022, during the COVID pandemic, there was a fourfold increase in religious discrimination accommodation charges of discrimination filed with the EEOC from somewhere to the number of 3,000 in 2020, 2021. But then with the masking, testing, COVID vaccination mandates, and requirements and policies for a lot of companies, a lot of employers and organizations, those objections and exemption requests for the masking, testing, and vaccination requirements skyrocketed. And so, that’s why we saw close to 12-15,000 charges of discrimination based on religion somehow.
So interestingly, it’s really a reaction to the pendulum swing of feelings and sentiment across the country. And it took me a little bit of time to read several times and digest what the executive order from the Trump administration back in January really was talking about, but it’s entitled, Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias in the workplace or in other contexts.
And really, it’s important to understand the motive or the background for this. It’s not so much that Christians have been abused, harassed, discriminated against. And of course, the current administration, and again, not to get into politics, but there is a strong belief that the United States of America was founded on Christian beliefs and religion and is a Christian nation, and that’s part of this drive and part of this push. But interestingly, statistically, and many of you may know this, currently about two-thirds of the United States population affiliates with a Christian faith, Christian sect, Christian Church. That has declined from the last 10, 15, 20 years from about 80%, now down to two-thirds, 65-66%. But interestingly, it’s not that Christian faith is being replaced or overcome by other faiths, it’s that the unaffiliated percentage of the population has jumped from 16% about 15 years ago to currently about a third, 29%, almost 30%, of the population identifies as unaffiliated with any religious faith or belief system.
And before I forget, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on religious beliefs, but similar to the other protected characteristics, the absence of a religious membership or religious faith or belonging is also protected. So, those who are unaffiliated or agnostic or atheist are also technically protected from discrimination and are entitled to potentially accommodations under Title VII.
So again, because there’s a rise in unaffiliated or unassociated, disassociated Christians now to not follow or not to be a member of a Christian faith, there is this pushback. And so, it’s, I think, more of just a concern for change, deviation from, again, some believe this nation was founded on Christian beliefs, and it’s really the pushback with regard to that.
So, it all started with that executive order back in January of this year, 2025. And all of the federal agencies were charged with doing a deep dive analysis and survey into their practices, policies, and situations with employees for the last four years. It was tied to the Biden administration. Obviously, the Trump administration preceded the Biden administration. But a look at those last four years and determining how or why Christians were not being heard or given a voice or allowed to express their views as much as minority groups or others.
And so all of the different agencies issued reports and did an analysis of what that looked like in their agencies. And along the way, and part of this process, it involved emboldening or deputizing employees to complain, snitch, read out co-workers or managers or others within their federal agency who they believed were not appreciating or giving Christian faith equal time or equal exposure than other faiths, or again, or non-agnostic or atheistic approach to the workplace. Which, by the way, all of us were taught we’re not supposed to talk about religion and politics at work. And so, part of that silence or not talking about religion overtly has been a long-standing tradition, but that’s where this pushback has come.
There also was, in July, the federal government issued guidelines for federal sector employees and specifically emboldened or approved of religious talk, debate, proselytization at work, which, again, prior to this, has been a no-no or something that we usually don’t want to allow or encourage just because it causes potential debates and friction in the workplace, which it has. But it specifically allows display of religious symbolism, religious talk, religious education between employees. One employee wants to educate the other. And again, you can see where this might cause some friction or just debates between employees and disruption of work.
While these guidelines only specifically apply to federal sector employees, the theory has already bled over into the private sector, and the sentiment and feeling that employees now can push back, can debate, can talk about religion in the workplace, and especially from a Christian viewpoint, can protect and spread their word or their beliefs in the workplace to push back for what they see as a woke mentality. And so, a lot of this stems from an underlying motive of anti-woke measures, similar to the anti-DEI, anti-American analysis that we’ve been talking about.
So, it’s important to understand and realize that again, Title VII says nobody should be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs, and they need to be accommodated. And so, it’s this accommodation piece that doesn’t exist in other areas of non-discrimination law except for the Americans with Disabilities Act, but with regard to disabilities and religion, as you all know, employers must proactively engage in the interactive process and accommodate religious beliefs.
And so, what’s happened is there’s been a slow or maybe relatively quick shift in using religion as protection and shield from being discriminated against to employees using their religious beliefs as a sword to either object or to get something extra in the workplace. And so, we’ve seen a lot of objections, complaints revolving around preferred pronouns in the workplace, objections based on religion, objections to DE&I initiatives. Certainly, a lot of consternation with regard to sexual orientation, transgender rights, transitioning situations where employees are switching which restroom they’re using. And a lot of those objections or complaints have been based on religion.
And part of the problem too is in today’s world, religious views and political views overlap and they’re intertwined and overlapping to such a degree that sometimes it’s hard to separate out what’s really a religious belief or a request or a political objection or request. For instance, the Israeli-Gaza war that’s going on, debates or taking sides or supporting one side or the other, is that based on religion or is that based on politics? The answer is it often is both, but either one of those could be the motive or the background for voicing concerns or objections with regard to that.
So, we’ve seen a huge array of discussion, objections in the workplace, whether it’s dress code exemptions or modifications by employees, employees wanting or needing off on their Sabbath or their holy day. So, Friday afternoons, obviously weekend or Sunday work or shifts have become a target. And so, whether they’re Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, or other religious-based requests for time off or scheduling changes, those have been increased.
And then, the other expansion that we’ve seen has been not only for the actual religious services, so church on Sunday or temple on Friday evening or Saturday, it’s extended to requests for extracurricular activities, such as choir practice or, “I want to be a camp counselor at the church summer camp,” or, “on weekends, I want to teach Sunday school classes.” And so, the real question is how far can this be taken with regard to accommodations? And yet to be determined, but we’ve seen a drastic increase in these objections and complaints, and we’re going to, I think, see it certainly for the next three years with this administration.
So, buckle up and understand that a lot of these requests or objections, even though they may seem political or seem neutral on their face, could be based in religion and something that an employer has to treat as an accommodation request.

Tae Phillips: Thanks, Jim. That’s really fascinating stuff. I mean, gosh, such a crazy world. So, look, stay tuned and the next episode will be on the EEOC’s focus on disability issues.

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