SAVANNAH, MO—The Alliance Defense Fund filed suit yesterday against a Missouri library that fired a librarian who requested to have Sundays off because of her religious beliefs.
"The library has apparently decided to require an employee to violate her conscience," said Kevin Theriot, an attorney with the Kansas City office of the Alliance Defense Fund. "We intend to make sure that this discrimination against her based upon her religious beliefs is corrected."
ADF and the Christian Law Association filed the case, Constance J. Rehm v. Rolling Hills Consolidated Library and Patricia Lamb, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, St. Joseph Division.
The Rolling Hills Consolidated Library fired librarian Connie Rehm for insubordination shortly after she filed her request to no longer be scheduled to work on Sundays because of her religious beliefs. Library officials claim they made an attempt to accommodate Rehm by allowing a part-time employee to volunteer to work for her on Sundays, in return for her working on Saturdays.
"It’s a smokescreen," Theriot said. "The library didn’t allow sufficient time for other employees to volunteer, and they plainly stated that, even if someone did, they wouldn’t necessarily approve the request."
Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act states that an employee’s request for accommodation based upon a sincere religious belief can only be denied if the employer can demonstrate that the request would cause undue hardship. The lawsuit claims that the library has not made its case for denying Rehm’s request and, additionally, went too far in firing her for insubordination.
"The library has been covering the bases on Sundays just fine since they fired Mrs. Rehm," Theriot said. "Why weren’t they able to accommodate her prior to that?"
ADF is America’s largest legal alliance defending religious liberty through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
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