Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, a day that its Christian founder and others have considered the Sabbath.
According to Fox Business, Laurel Torode, a member of the United Church of God, observes the Sabbath on Saturdays. She claims she made that known upon interviewing for a job at a Chick-fil-A in the Austin area of Texas in August 2023, reports BBC.
According to Torode, she was given accommodation, but that later changed. She worked as a manager that oversaw delivery drivers for several months but was then told in February 2024 that she had to work Saturdays. When seeking accommodation to keep her management position, she was allegedly told she would have to accept a deliver driver position with reduced pay, hours and benefits to avoid working on Saturday.
Torode was fired after she declined to take the lower position, reports The Christian Post.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is now going after the franchise operator, Hatch Trick, Inc., saying they violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Attorney Daniel Schmid is the associate vice president of legal affairs at Liberty Counsel.
“If the news stories are correct, then I think the operator of the Chick-fil-A in Texas has a problem. The employee made her religious beliefs known, and that's working on Saturday would be a problem,” Schmid says. “They hired her knowing that and then changed their mind."
Schmid said that Title VII requires accommodation for religious beliefs.
“If you have more than 15 employees and you're subject to it, you have to abide by that. It's not a, ‘Well, it's inconvenient for us.’ It has to be proven to be an undue hardship, or else you must accommodate,” Schmid states.
While it remains possible that the owner can still demonstrate that it was an undue hardship to accommodate Torode, Schmid said everyone will have to wait and see.
“We'll find out in the litigation, but it was — at least at this point — enough for the EEOC to say, ‘Well, we think you violated Title VII,'" Schmid says.
