Religious Discrimination: Hospital Employee Cannot Preach to Patients
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
June 1998
Quick Summary: A hospital can insist that employees not preach their religious beliefs to patients and can discipline an employee who does so.
A hospital cannot discriminate against an employee for the employee’s religious beliefs. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, CONNECTICUT, 1998.
A nurse who worked at the hospital was an outpatient getting a mammogram. She became extremely unnerved when the radiology technician told her to "repent her sins" because the "day of judgment was near."
The nurse took this as a veiled innuendo that something seriously wrong was seen on her mammogram. The technician in fact was in the general habit of preaching her fundamentalist beliefs to the hospital’s patients.
The nurse complained to management. The technician in question was already in trouble for other aspects of her performance. She was fired. She sued, among other things, for religious discrimination.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut acknowledged that an employer may restrict employees from on-the-job religious practices that interfere with the employer’s business activities.
On the other hand, the court sensed there also was some religious bias toward this employee because of her fundamentalist beliefs. The court rebuffed the hospital’s insistence the suit should be dismissed, and ruled the case should go to trial to ferret out the hospital’s true motivation.
Thomas v. Hospital, 990 F. Supp. 81 (D. Conn., 1998).