Professor Norton Testifies on Workplace Religious Freedom Act before House Subcommittee

Professor Helen Norton testified today before the House Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as an expert in constitutional law and employment discrimination on the pending Workplace Religious Freedom Act (HR 1431). Her testimony (1) explained her support for the bill’s overarching goal of amending Title VII to provide greater protections for workers’ religious practices, (2) expressed concern that the language as drafted may create significant conflicts with other persons’ important civil and health care rights, and (3) suggested some possible approaches for resolving those concerns.  

Professor Norton provided two possible approaches to resolving these concerns. One possible solution would revise H.R. 1431’s definition of “undue hardship” to expressly provide that accommodations that impose an undue hardship include practices that conflict with employers’ legally-mandated or voluntarily-adopted antidiscrimination requirements or that delay or disrupt the delivery of health care services. Another approach might require an employer to accommodate the most frequently-requested accommodations – and those that do not create conflicts of the sort described above – unless it can show that the accommodation would pose an undue hardship as rigorously defined under H.R. 1431 as proposed.

Professor Norton’s testimony drew from her work as a law professor teaching and writing about constitutional law and employment discrimination issues, as well as her experience as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration, where her duties included supervising the Civil Rights Division’s Title VII enforcement efforts.