Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 383814_pub.pdf

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No. 38381-4-III
Suarez v. State

Id. Once established, an employer can defend the action by showing that it offered the

employee a reasonable accommodation or that the accommodation would cause undue

hardship to the employer. Id. at 502.

Suarez contends that the School failed to accommodate her religious beliefs in two

ways: (1) by failing to accommodate her need for time off to observe religious holidays,

and (2) by failing to accommodate her need for Saturdays off to observe her Sabbath.

The School does not admit to discrimination, but for purposes of summary judgment, the

School focuses on its defenses and contends that it either provided reasonable

accommodations or rejected proposed accommodations that would cause an undue

hardship. To address these issues, we need to define “reasonable accommodation” and

“undue hardship.”

Besides Kumar, there are no Washington cases interpreting or applying the

recently recognized right to religious accommodations. In Kumar, the court looked to

federal law as persuasive in developing the state right to religious accommodations.

Although the court did not affirmatively define the term “reasonable accommodation,” it

did recognize that “a ‘reasonable accommodation’ need not be the precise

accommodation the employee requests, even if the employer could provide that

accommodation without suffering any undue hardship.” Kumar, 180 Wn.2d at 502

(citing Ansonia Bd. of Educ. v. Philbrook, 479 U.S. 60, 68, 107 S. Ct. 367, 93 L. Ed. 2d

305 (1986)). Federal courts have generally defined a “reasonable accommodation” as

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No. 38381-4-III
Suarez v. State

one that resolves the conflict between an employee’s work duties and religious beliefs.