Religious discrimination
Religious discrimination is unequal treatment, exclusion, or disadvantage based on a person’s religion, religious beliefs, or lack of religion.
Religious freedom: The right to adopt, practice, change, or reject a religion without coercion or penalty. It names the liberty that religious discrimination restricts.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: A United States federal law prohibiting employment discrimination based on religion and other protected characteristics. It governs many U.S. workplace claims and requires reasonable religious accommodation.
Racism: A system of beliefs, practices, or institutions that assigns significance to race and produces racial hierarchy or disadvantage. Religion and race can overlap, but each describes a distinct basis for discrimination.
Religious persecution of Christians: Severe mistreatment of people because they are Christian, including restrictions, threats, or violence. It shows how discrimination can escalate into organized coercion and physical danger.
Employment discrimination: Unequal treatment in hiring, pay, promotion, or working conditions based on a protected characteristic. Workplace rules and decisions are common channels for religion-based disadvantage.
Religious clothing: Clothing or head coverings worn as part of religious observance or identity. Dress codes can burden religious practice when they exclude such clothing.
Antisemitism: Hostility, prejudice, or discrimination directed against Jews as Jews. It targets a religious and ethnic group through a historically specific form of bias.
Religious conversion: The adoption of a religion different from one’s previous religion or from having no religion. Pressure or penalties surrounding conversion reveal whether belief is genuinely free.
Reasonable accommodation: An adjustment to a rule, practice, or environment that enables equal participation without undue hardship. Workplaces and schools may need adjustments for religious dress, observance, or practice.
Religious accommodation in the workplace: Workplace adjustments that address religious practices, subject to applicable legal limits. Scheduling, dress, and duties can become concrete accommodation disputes.