By Saranac Hale Spencer, From The Legal Intelligencer

A one-sentence section of Pennsylvania unemployment law has revived a religious discrimination claim brought in federal court by an atheist against his Christian employer.

U.S. District Senior Judge Jan DuBois of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania revisited his October 2014 opinion that had dismissed the claim that Christian Heating and Air Conditioning had denied Paul Mathis a reasonable accommodation under Title VII.

Mathis had been a sheet-metal installer for the company for about two years when he was fired after covering with tape the part of his name tag that said, “This company is not only a business, it is a ministry. It is set on standards that are higher than man’s own. Our goal is to run this company in a way most pleasing to the lord.” The statement conflicted with his beliefs as an atheist, according to DuBois’ opinion.

The company’s owner, David Peppelman, told Mathis he couldn’t keep his job if he kept the tape on his badge, according to the opinion. Mathis refused to take off the tape and was fired later that day, in January 2012.

Mathis was later denied benefits from the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Service Center and, after filing an appeal to the center’s board, he was again denied when the board found that he had chosen to leave his job by not removing the tape and classified the action as a “voluntary quit” under state unemployment law.

The Commonwealth Court upheld the board’s decision, finding that there was evidence Mathis had been given “‘a real choice between alternatives,'” DuBois said, quoting from that court’s opinion referring to the option Mathis had to remove the tape.

Mathis filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia in June 2013, bringing two claims under Title VII—that he was denied a reasonable accommodation and that he was fired in retaliation for his religious beliefs.

Christian Heating and Air Conditioning moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that Mathis was collaterally estopped from relitigating the issues that had been decided in the state-court proceedings.

In October, DuBois agreed that Mathis would be barred from bringing his accommodation claim, but he allowed the retaliation claim to proceed.

Mathis’ lawyer later submitted a motion for clarification, citing to a section of Pennsylvania law stating that no judgment made under the unemployment compensation law would be binding in any later action, and the judge converted it to a motion for reconsideration and reversed his earlier decision dismissing the claim.

That section of the law “clearly provides that findings of fact and conclusions of law made with respect to unemployment compensation claims under Pennsylvania law do not have preclusive effect in subsequent proceedings, such as the one before this court,” DuBois said, overriding local rules that set the deadline for reconsideration at two weeks after the order is issued, which would have meant that the deadline would have passed in October.

The situation in this case is almost exactly the opposite of the situation underlying a 1995 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which held that a Catholic employee of a telephone company who wanted to wear a two-inch round button with a color picture of an aborted fetus and an anti-abortion message had been offered a reasonable accommodation when she was told by the company that she could wear the button at work as long as it was covered.

What would have made this case particularly interesting, Debbie Kaminer, a professor of law at Baruch College, said, is if the company had argued that it is a religious organization, which would be afforded the right, under Title VII, to take certain actions that nonreligious organizations aren’t allowed.

That would have presented to the court the issue of the right of a corporation to the religious exemption under Title VII versus the employee’s right to accommodation for the religious expression.

But, in its answer to Mathis’ complaint, Christian Heating and Air Conditioning identified itself as a corporation and denied being a religious organization.

So, the question to the court is whether the tape is an undue hardship to the company, and whether that is more than a de minimis cost to the company, Kaminer said.

Ari Karpf of Karpf, Karpf & Cerutti in Bensalem represented Mathis. Frederick Lachat, who has a practice in Philadelphia, represented Christian Heating and Air Conditioning. Neither could be reached for comment.

(Copies of the 10-page opinion in Mathis v. Christian Heating and Air Conditioning, PICS No. 15-0396, are available from The Legal Intelligencer. Please call the Pennsylvania Instant Case Service at 800-276-PICS to order or for information.)

For more on this story go to: http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/id=1202720553269/Atheists-Religious-Discrimination-Case-Gets-Second-Wind#ixzz3UYiSlOg7