1.
This Act may be cited as the
Workplace Religious Freedom Act of
2005
.
2.
(a)
Section
701(j) of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e(j)) is
amended—
(1)
by inserting
(1)
after (j)
;
(2)
by inserting , after
initiating and engaging in an affirmative and bona fide effort,
after
unable
;
(3)
by striking an
employee’s
and all that follows through religious
and
inserting an employee’s religious
; and
(4)
by adding at the end the
following:
(2)
(A)
In this subsection, the
term employee includes an employee (as defined in subsection (f)),
or a prospective employee, who, with or without reasonable accommodation, is
qualified to perform the essential functions of the employment position that
such individual holds or desires.
(B)
In this paragraph, the term
perform the essential functions includes carrying out the core
requirements of an employment position and does not include carrying out
practices relating to clothing, practices relating to taking time off, or other
practices that may have a temporary or tangential impact on the ability to
perform job functions, if any of the practices described in this subparagraph
restrict the ability to wear religious clothing, to take time off for a holy
day, or to participate in a religious observance or practice.
(3)
In this subsection, the
term undue hardship means an accommodation requiring significant
difficulty or expense. For purposes of determining whether an accommodation
requires significant difficulty or expense, factors to be considered in making
the determination shall include—
(A)
the identifiable cost of
the accommodation, including the costs of loss of productivity and of
retraining or hiring employees or transferring employees from 1 facility to
another;
(B)
the overall financial
resources and size of the employer involved, relative to the number of its
employees; and
(C)
for an employer with
multiple facilities, the geographic separateness or administrative or fiscal
relationship of the facilities.
.
(b)
Section 703 of such Act
(42 U.S.C.
2000e–2) is amended by adding at the end the following:
(o)
(1)
In this subsection:
(A)
The term
employee has the meaning given the term in section
701(j)(2).
(B)
The term leave of
general usage means leave provided under the policy or program of an
employer, under which—
(i)
an employee may take leave
by adjusting or altering the work schedule or assignment of the employee
according to criteria determined by the employer; and
(ii)
the employee may determine
the purpose for which the leave is to be utilized.
(2)
For purposes of determining
whether an employer has committed an unlawful employment practice under this
title by failing to provide a reasonable accommodation to the religious
observance or practice of an employee, for an accommodation to be considered to
be reasonable, the accommodation shall remove the conflict between employment
requirements and the religious observance or practice of the employee.
(3)
An employer shall be
considered to commit such a practice by failing to provide such a reasonable
accommodation for an employee if the employer refuses to permit the employee to
utilize leave of general usage to remove such a conflict solely because the
leave will be used to accommodate the religious observance or practice of the
employee.
.
3.
Effective date; application of amendments
(a)
Except as provided in
subsection (b), this Act and the amendments made by section 2 take effect on
the date of enactment of this Act.
(b)
Application of amendments
The amendments made by
section 2 do not apply with respect to conduct occurring before the date of
enactment of this Act.