That was the question before the Seventh Circuit in Noesen v. Medical Staffing Network. The court had to decide how far a pharmacy had to go to accommodate the religious beliefs of a pharmacist who refused to fill or handle birth-control prescriptions.

PRECLUDED ACTIVITIES

Wal-Mart hired a Roman Catholic pharmacist to work at a Wisconsin pharmacy. The state had restricted his license after he refused to fill a woman’s contraception prescription or to refer her to another pharmacy. The restriction required him to tell potential employers what services he wouldn’t perform and how he would ensure that patients’ medication access remained unimpeded.

The pharmacist informed Wal-Mart that his religious convictions precluded him from performing “any activity related to the provision of contraceptive articles,” including “complete or partial cooperation with patient-care situations that involve the provision of or counsel on contraceptive articles.”

MANAGER ACCOMMODATES

The pharmacist’s manager understood these limitations to mean that the pharmacist wouldn’t fill birth-control prescriptions. So, the manager relieved him from:

• Filling birth-control prescriptions
• Taking birth-control orders from patients or physicians
• Handing birth-control medications to customers
• Checking birth-control orders

The manager also arranged for birth-control prescriptions to be sorted into a separate basket so that the pharmacist wouldn’t have to touch them. In addition, the manager ensured that someone else would be available to fill orders and respond to patients’ birth-control inquiries.

PHARMACIST DEMANDS MORE

Despite these accommodations, the pharmacist refused to perform general customer-service duties that involved even talking briefly to patients seeking contraception. The pharmacist explained that, if required to speak to patients seeking birth control, he would always counsel them against it and refuse to fill their prescriptions.

So, he didn’t speak to these customers. For example, when he answered phone calls from patients or physicians trying to place birth-control orders, he put them on hold and refused to alert other pharmacy staff that someone was holding. And when patients came to the counter with birth-control prescriptions, the pharmacist walked away and refused to tell anyone that a customer needed assistance.

The manager suggested that the pharmacist assist only males or customers not of childbearing age. The pharmacist rejected this offer, insisting that the only acceptable accommodation was to relieve him of all counter and phone duties unless another employee first screened out those seeking birth control.

The manager agreed that he and the pharmacy intern would assist all walk-in customers. But because of high caller volume, the pharmacist, like all other staff, had to answer the phones, though he could refer callers with birth-control issues to others.

When the pharmacist rejected this accommodation, the manager fired him. He sued, alleging religious discrimination, and the trial court threw out the suit without a trial.

IMPACT ON OTHER EMPLOYEES

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs unless that would subject the employer to undue hardship. A reasonable accommodation “eliminates the conflict between employment requirements and religious practices.”

The pharmacist argued that Wal-Mart’s efforts to accommodate him didn’t resolve this conflict. He insisted that only relieving him of all counter and phone duties would eliminate the conflict.

The Seventh Circuit held that the pharmacist wasn’t entitled to that accommodation because it would impose an undue hardship on Wal-Mart. A hardship is undue when a religious accommodation would cause more than minimal hardship to an employer or other employees. An accommodation that requires other employees to assume a disproportionate workload (or diverts them from their regular work) is an undue hardship as a matter of law.

The pharmacist’s proposed accommodation would require diverting other employees from their responsibilities and requiring them to do extra work to cover for him. So the Seventh Circuit concluded that Wal-Mart wasn’t obliged to rearrange staffing and incur these costs to accommodate an inflexible employee.

LESSON LEARNED

This case is instructive for employers because it shows how far the manager went in trying to accommodate the pharmacist. By going the extra mile, the company was able to show that the pharmacist was an inflexible employee and that it had acted reasonably.