This is a good answer. And honestly, it's a reasonable question from the LW, and I say that as someone who has felt uncomfortable asking for religious accommodations. People should know what's reasonable and what's unreasonable, and what the law is. If someone needs to leave early every friday for shabbat and can't work saturdays, then whether that needs to be accommodated depends a lot on what the job is -- and I'm pretty sure that the way it works in retail, where having blackout days on weekends is often prohibited, is illegal in most cases. But if the job is "weekend manager", that's different; that's undue hardship.
It's also unfortunately true in the US that the SCOTUS has recently been interpreting religious freedom of employees around Christianity, explicitly, and they've made it clear that "sincerely held belief of a Christian" is protected whether or not there's any connection between that sincerely held belief and any dogma, church, theology, pastor, or lifestyle choice of the Christian employee to support it. That's not for Alison to address, of course, although it's pretty obvious that LW's employee is not a Christian, or at least, not from a mainstream Christian group.
But what is relevant for Alison to address is state laws, which are also shitty in the same way, usually, for example, Pharmacist conscience clauses. Which basically mean anti-choice pharmacists can claim that they don't have to do their jobs, even if there is no other alternative employee available, in a way that almost exclusively protects certain flavors of Christian. (I can't imagine such a law protecting a Jewish or Muslim pharmacist who refused to sell any medications containing gelatin capsules, for example. It would be obviously nonsense, even though the letter of the laws would theoretically require it.)
So, in other words, it depends on the job, and the state. Also the courts are trash.
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This is a good answer. And honestly, it's a reasonable question from the LW, and I say that as someone who has felt uncomfortable asking for religious accommodations. People should know what's reasonable and what's unreasonable, and what the law is. If someone needs to leave early every friday for shabbat and can't work saturdays, then whether that needs to be accommodated depends a lot on what the job is -- and I'm pretty sure that the way it works in retail, where having blackout days on weekends is often prohibited, is illegal in most cases. But if the job is "weekend manager", that's different; that's undue hardship.
It's also unfortunately true in the US that the SCOTUS has recently been interpreting religious freedom of employees around Christianity, explicitly, and they've made it clear that "sincerely held belief of a Christian" is protected whether or not there's any connection between that sincerely held belief and any dogma, church, theology, pastor, or lifestyle choice of the Christian employee to support it. That's not for Alison to address, of course, although it's pretty obvious that LW's employee is not a Christian, or at least, not from a mainstream Christian group.
But what is relevant for Alison to address is state laws, which are also shitty in the same way, usually, for example, Pharmacist conscience clauses. Which basically mean anti-choice pharmacists can claim that they don't have to do their jobs, even if there is no other alternative employee available, in a way that almost exclusively protects certain flavors of Christian. (I can't imagine such a law protecting a Jewish or Muslim pharmacist who refused to sell any medications containing gelatin capsules, for example. It would be obviously nonsense, even though the letter of the laws would theoretically require it.)
So, in other words, it depends on the job, and the state. Also the courts are trash.