The 11th Circuit panel that ruled unanimously against Patterson (the employee) was made up of a GHW Bush nominee, a Barack Obama nominee, and a Trump nominee.
The court of appeals found that Patterson had made out a prima facie case of religious discrimination. At that point, under the law, the burden shifts to the employer to establish that it had made a reasonable effort to accommodate the employee's religious observances and the employee must show he/she made a good faith effort to accept the accommodation offered by the employer.
In this case, Patterson started working for Walgreen's in 2005. As an accommodation to his religious observances, the store agreed not to assign him to Saturday shifts. This worked well and Patterson was promoted from customer care representative to training instructor. His employer at that time agreed to schedule training sessions only on Sunday through Thursday.
Where emergencies arose and a training session had to be conducted on Friday night or Saturday, Patterson was given the opportunity to swap shifts with another employee, an option he took on several occasions. However, in 2011, in response to an order of the Alabama Board of Pharmacy, Walgreen's was given 48 hours to shift customer care responsibility for calls coming from Alabama to the Orlando care center. In order to train the Orlando staff to handle the calls coming from out of state, Walgreen scheduled an emergency training session for Saturday. Patterson was given the option of trying to find a substitute. However, he only tried one other employee (another instructor) who was not available. Even though other non-instructors could have taken over the role in a pinch, he didn't try anyone else. Consequently, the training session had to be delayed.
Because he could not guarantee that he would work on a Saturday if not other option was available and the employer could not guarantee that there would always be another option available, it was suggested that he return to his position as a customer care representative where there would be a larger pool of potential substitutes. He rejected that offer, at which point he was terminated.
It's a tough case. Employers are expected to make a reasonable effort to accommodate an employee's religious observances but aren't required to force others to work in the employee's place. The fact that the District Court and a unanimous appeals court reached the same conclusion suggests that this is one of those cases that produces a result that really isn't all that satisfactory but is consistent with the law.
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