Religion is a protected class, under the civil rights act of 1964 - so you most certainly can’t discriminate against employees based on their religion and depending on the sort of service you provide the public, your customers:
Supremacy clause applies here.
That being said, you can most certainly throw someone out for causing a disturbance in your place of business, which something like handing out religious tracts in your store or preaching or bothering other customers would fall under. But wearing religious dress of some sort doesn’t probably cross that line.
I don’t know, maybe. It doesn’t change the law, of course. The fact is that owning a business doesn’t mean you can ignore federal or state regulations, even if you disagree with them. People can work to change them if they don’t like them (and people certainly find ways to work around this stuff - right to work laws, for one, where you can fire someone without a stated reason), but they can run afoul of state and federal authorities and risk fines as well as law suits by not abiding by them.
I also like how they think that all Christians should be bannable from establishments because they’re somehow the same as the Phelps clan, which would already get banned for harassing other patrons, not their faith.
Gleeful bigotry really doesn’t allow for nuance, doesn’t it?
Yes there are laws in place to protect you from workplace religious discrimination. Not so much for the customer.
Gee, you’ve hit upon why I abhor religion.
Riiiight, because people haven’t been killed in the name of religion since the beginning of recorded history. In fact, it is the awful treatment of people called for by religion that caused me to despise it. But turning away people who support oppression and hate is just a terrible way to treat my fellow human being. I should just shut up and take money from people who belong to iron age death cults responsible for the death of untold millions. That would make me a better person right? Taking their money?
I’m pretty sure that the EEOC also covers hiring practices. If someone applies and they get turned down because they are religious (all other things being equal), they can file a complaint. Plus, the Civil Rights act covers public accommodations, so yes, that sometimes covers customers. You’d have to look at case law to see how this has been hashed out over the years, but I’m pretty sure you can’t refuse service based on obvious signs of religiosity if you serve the public.
Or they can just sue you for illegal discrimination against a protected class. The ban on full face masks that some business have is not targeted at religion and has a valid secular purpose. Your proposed action is targeted specifically at religion and wouldn’t pass muster. If your business is a public accommodation, as most public facing business are, you cannot target protected classes for discrimination. This is a good thing, because that is why private bus companies can’t make minorities or women or people of certain religions sit at the back of the bus. It’s why diners can’t refuse to serve people based on the color of their skin.
They can sue. Anyone can sue for anything after all.
I might just argue that these protected classes deny my right to equal protection under the law as atheism isn’t a religion. So, atheists have a reduced protection under the law than those who are religious. Businesses are free to eject me based on my lack of faith and I’m not allowed to hold office in my state since we have a religious test for office.
People chose religion in their life but like everyone else, I was born an atheist. It was not a choice I made. - a crude illustration of why I think protected status for religion is ridiculous when compared to the real and reasonable need to have laws against discrimination based on race or gender.
Or, perhaps I would explain that the people are allowed in but their religious gear is not welcome. I will accommodate anyone but I will not allow my imaginary shop to be used as a place of proselytization as that would harm my non-religious customers.
Religion is a protected class but the laws making them such are questionable at best and need to be tested against my right for equal protection as well as my right to seek happiness.
Yes, it was a choice that you made. The term “atheist” means “no god”, which is a reactionary position. Defining yourself not by how you think reality works, but by comparing yourself to others. If you called yourself a “reasonist” or some such thing, I’d concede that you had a point.
How do you even define religion? If you choose to avoid it, you must presumably have some criteria of what is/isn’t “religious”. Here you contrast religion versus atheism, but as you might be aware some religions are also atheistic.
If you are simply going by organized religions as a sort of club that oner can join, avoiding them should be pretty easy. But much of the world does not frame religion this way. In many places it is inseparable from any other cultural traditions. Which is why one does not typically “join” indigenous Chinese, American, or Australian religions. So this would also cross over into ethnically-based discrimination as well.
Well, the validity of this purpose is certainly debatable.
I’d say that you have a point there - but I’d argue that shopkeepers can be reasonably expected to post requirements they have for doing business. Shops are typically private, but presumed open to the public, unless stated otherwise. The more personal stipulations the shopkeeper has, the less the chance that a prospective customer will be bothered to read them. A few do’s and don’ts on a small sign is not unreasonable. But once you are listing dozens of requirements, people will tend to ignore them. Also, posting them keeps shopkeepers fair because the public will know if they are principled or capricious. If somebody leaves a shop in a burqa with bags of stuff, but you tell me that you prohibit the garment, then you lose credibility.
The first amendment bars a religious test for office, so your state’s law is illegal, and you’d have grounds to challenge it. I think you should, in fact. I’d guess that law would get thrown out.
But you are wrong, I’m afraid, about your belief that you are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion if you are running a business that is open to the public. Lester Maddox learned that the hard way regarding race:
There are plenty of religious minorities in the US that have faced discrimination in the US (Jews, Catholics in certain places, Buddhist, Muslims, etc). They are a protected class because they have been discriminated against in public life. Your right to run for office as an atheist is protected, but your right to discriminate against others is not.
If they are open to the public, then you are not allowed to reject a person from your business if they are of a protected class. Check out the link I had on Lester Maddox. Even a privately run business needs to adhere to the Civil Rights act regarding discrimination. The segregationists tried that back in the 60s. It didn’t fly then and it won’t fly now.
Only if their membership in that class is the reason you’re rejecting them. You can certainly kick someone out of your store if they start loudly reading from the Bible or circumcising an infant or sacrificing a chicken. The store is under no obligation to accommodate religious practices.
That is some twisted logic. We are born without religion and some are later indoctrinated in to it. The natural state of being is atheist. Unless of course, you believe children are born religious. Also, atheist from atheos is more accurately translated as without gods.
I was not aware. Please tell me more.
The belief in higher spiritual power without evidence and based in faith alone.
Truly sad isn’t it? Cultures, so wrapped up in imaginary things that they can’t get their collective heads out of their asses long enough to see how much time, energy, and resources are wasted on their imaginary friends while people suffer and starve around them may be quaint and all but do nothing to move humanity forward in any positive way.
Atheism as a cargo cult. Really? That’s kind of a stretch.
Nor is anyone’s ability to believe a magic man in the sky made the world infringed by not being able to shop in my imaginary store. But neither of those non-sequitur have anything to do with religion being a protected class which gives more access to the law to believers than it does non-
believers.
And that’s the catch. Without licking the boots of conservative christians, being elected in to office in my state is a near impossibility. So, to challenge the law, I would need to be elected and then be denied office due to my lack of faith in a “higher power” before I would have cause to bring anything to the courts.
As i stated previously, race, sex, gender - these are things which should not be discriminated against. They are conditions of life and should not be compared with a choice to believe in something imaginary. Also, the analogy fails due to the fact that I will allow anyone in my imaginary shop, just not their religious trinkets and effects which amount to public proselytization which is a form of assault in my view.
I’d assumed that’d go without saying, especially since @anotherone is specifically barring people because of their faith. I also mentioned that kicking someone out due to causing a disturbance is also legally sound, so, yes, I already addressed that point.
If you actually read the link to the Civil Rights act that I posted up thread, you’d indeed see that religion is included in that list precisely because Christian (protestant often, especially in the south) supremacy has been used as a point of discrimination. Whether you agree with that or not is a seperate issue, but it’s right there, in black and white, in the civil rights act. [quote=“anotherone, post:208, topic:82880”]
just not their religious trinkets
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Protected speech, actually. Just existing as a religious person and having outward displays of that are not the same thing as reading from a holy book in the aisles of a Family Dollar. Nor is it a form of assault. You may not like it or care to see it, but that’s another story. It has no real bearing on whether or not you are able to discriminate.
We are born as animals. All else is the work of the human imagination, including the implicit notion of ‘gods’ within the term ‘atheist’. To put it another way: those who identify as ‘atheist’ have chosen to answer the question posed by the root term ‘theist’.
Taoism is often described as an atheistic religion because it appears to have answered ‘no’ to this question. This is incorrect. Taoism refutes the question itself.
