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Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

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Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#71

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #64
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that means that a sincerely held religious belief need not actually be a tenet of the religion you follow, so long as you believe it, and believe it is related to your religion. Personally this seems like a gray area that is ripe for abuse. But I guess until such abuse becomes much more commonplace, we will not see a reform in the degree to which religious beliefs are favored by the courts. On the other han…

Generally the courts in their wisdom have decided its not the States interest to be pontificating on which religious beliefs are valid and sanctioned and which are not. That would be putting the cart before the horse. If the State gets to decide, then you might as well throw out all religious beliefs. The state is the Church. Hence the standard that the belief just needs to be deeply held. I know that the knee jerk r…

I have my own opinions about the wisdom of the courts. There are plenty of countries where religious beliefs are given far less leeway to interfere with secular contracts and associations, and many of those countries are still fine places to live. IMO, that's the proper place for religion, but there would have to be much abuse before we countenanced going in that direction in the US.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#72

Post by selcuka »

markdown wrote: post #65
smogcutter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, but seems from the outside that they key thing is that another employee did get an alternate background check. So being told no accommodations are available is BS. Seems like a pretty straightforward argument from there to saying the employee is being discriminated against for a sincerely held religious belief. The belief itself being fringe hogwash is irrelevant. Plus the employee offering to accept an…

> for a sincerely held religious belief. You can't just let every single human claim whatever they want is a religious belief. To claim that having your likeness captured (whether it's a photo of your face, your foot, your fingers, or whatever) is against your religious beliefs is laughable. Does the person not have no drivers license (their face captured by a camera)? If we can claim whatever we want, well it's agai…

You are cherry picking from the comment (and the article):

> the key thing is that another employee did get an alternate background check

It doesn't matter if it's a religious belief that you approve of or not. The point is it was possible but was not offered as an option for this person.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#73

Post by selcuka »

jdavis703 wrote: post #19
keithnz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a religion, with many denominations. Not quite sure what the criteria is for when something varies such that it wouldn't be considered Christian.

There is no criteria. Anyone who calls themselves Christian is a Christian. The same goes for any other religion. All religions have differing internal beliefs, so there is no objective definition of a “true believer.”

I believe it's not the same for any other religion. For example conversions to Judaism are overseen by a religious court.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#74

Post by bigiain »

ethbr0 wrote: post #57
motohagiography wrote: post #24

Good. Religious exemptions are pragmatic canaries for state overreach. People are not livestock, even if states and employers like to treat them that way. The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation, it represents a very real line between the individual and group and whether one is a citizen or mere property. This is the marking issue with biometrics. Are you a being with agency, or are yo…

> taking things from you under duress or coercion is not consent This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services. Someone being forced to resign because their work requirements are incompatible with their beliefs is part of having a moral code. You're not entitled to be able to work in a specific job. Refusing to being tracked with an identifier, when you're working in…

> This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services.

Who then changed the agreement from not even mentioning requiring fingerprinting to absolutely requiring it. That's the most egregious bad-faith example in this story.

If a business can arbitrarily declare "You now all need to pass background checks including fingerprinting to keep your jobs", what's to stop them saying "You now need to accept getting paid half of what we'd agreed to when you were employed"?

There was an employment agreement, the employer wished to add conditions to that after the agreement was reached between the two parties. And there apparent "re negotiation" of that agreement was the company saying "OK, you're fired". And the EEOC and the court both decided that was not OK. Which seems like the right outcome to me, regardless of whether the "religious discrimination" makes any sense or not. I'd totally expect the prosecution lawyers to play whatever the strongest argument the law had available to them. I would totally let a lawyer convince me it was appropriate to claim I have a christian belief and that part of that means I do not want to be fingerprinted, if that allowed them to use the most powerful legal argument against an employer who had arbitrarily and capriciously fired me on the spot for resisting being fingerprinted to keep the job I'd had to 16 months without that requirement.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#75

Post by gizmo686 »

markdown wrote: post #65
smogcutter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, but seems from the outside that they key thing is that another employee did get an alternate background check. So being told no accommodations are available is BS. Seems like a pretty straightforward argument from there to saying the employee is being discriminated against for a sincerely held religious belief. The belief itself being fringe hogwash is irrelevant. Plus the employee offering to accept an…

> for a sincerely held religious belief. You can't just let every single human claim whatever they want is a religious belief. To claim that having your likeness captured (whether it's a photo of your face, your foot, your fingers, or whatever) is against your religious beliefs is laughable. Does the person not have no drivers license (their face captured by a camera)? If we can claim whatever we want, well it's agai…

The courts really do not want to get into the bussiness of dictating people's religion. They explicitly do not require that a religious belief be well supported by the text, orthodoxy, or any denomination of the religion. Nor do they require that a religious belief is self consistent or unchanging through time. It is possible to argue that a belief is not sincerly held, but it is very difficult to win such an arguement. As such these legal arguemnts are almost always about what constitutes a 'reasonable accomodation'.

Perpetual employment is not a reasonable accomodation; but if you work in HR at a large company, you could probably get out of handling the firing of other employees.

In practice what this means is that if an employee says they have a strong personal conviction about something, the employer must offer reasonable accomodations if any are available, or be prepared to show that the claim was made in bad faith.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#76

Post by ryandrake »

iammisc wrote: post #45
lotsofpulp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation Anyone’s assumptions or thoughts can qualify as a religion. At least for any consistent and useful definition of religion.

And in the united states it does. A religion is any deeply held belief. That's the only standard.

But where do you draw the line? What if I have a deeply held religious belief that human sacrifice is required by god? Can I then go around killing people? There’s got to be some kind of limit.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#77

Post by akerl_ »

bigiain wrote: post #74
ethbr0 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taking things from you under duress or coercion is not consent This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services. Someone being forced to resign because their work requirements are incompatible with their beliefs is part of having a moral code. You're not entitled to be able to work in a specific job. Refusing to being tracked with an identifier, when you're working in…

> This was his job. With his private sector employer. Who paid him money in exchange for services. Who then changed the agreement from not even mentioning requiring fingerprinting to absolutely requiring it. That's the most egregious bad-faith example in this story. If a business can arbitrarily declare "You now all need to pass background checks including fingerprinting to keep your jobs", what's to stop them saying…

> what's to stop them saying "You now need to accept getting paid half of what we'd agreed to when you were employed"?

In most of the US, for most US jobs, absolutely nothing. The vast majority of US workers are at-will employees. Their boss can call them up at any point and say “We’ve decided that starting next pay period, we’ll be cutting your salary in half. Have a great day!” The employee’s options are to accept that or start job hunting.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#78

Post by TeeMassive »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #44
motohagiography wrote: post #24

Good. Religious exemptions are pragmatic canaries for state overreach. People are not livestock, even if states and employers like to treat them that way. The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation, it represents a very real line between the individual and group and whether one is a citizen or mere property. This is the marking issue with biometrics. Are you a being with agency, or are yo…

Religious exemptions shouldn't be a thing though. I should not get more protections or rights in any way than another citizen because I happen to have or claim different beliefs than them. I'm not talking about being discriminated against because of religious beliefs, mind you. I'm talking about the right to do or refuse something (e.g., refuse a fingerprint or, or refuse to serve alcohol) and protection of those cho…

Religious exemptions are not limited to "official religions". Deep moral and philosophical exemptions can and have been made.

Re: Man wins $65K after being fired for refusing to be fingerprinted

#79

Post by wyattpeak »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
iammisc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the united states it does. A religion is any deeply held belief. That's the only standard.

But where do you draw the line? What if I have a deeply held religious belief that human sacrifice is required by god? Can I then go around killing people? There’s got to be some kind of limit.

There are plenty of lines around what rights a genuinely held belief entitles you to. What the parent is saying is that there is no line between religious and other deeply-held beliefs.
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