December 10, 2001
Court won't hear workplace witness case
___By Robert Marus
___Associated Baptist Press
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The Supreme Court has declined to hear a Florida case about employees' rights to share their faith in the workplace.
___In 1993, Kenneth Weiss was fired from his technician's job with REN Laboratories in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. His employers claimed they terminated Weiss in part because he harassed co-workers by offering a Bible to a Muslim co-worker and showing a lesbian co-worker Scripture passages calling homosexuality "vile."
___Weiss subsequently sued his former employer under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, claming religious discrimination. Weiss said the activities leading to his dismissal were an integral part of his faith.
___A Florida jury initially found in Weiss' favor and awarded him $129,000. The judge, however, threw out the ruling, citing a lack of evidence of wrongful termination.
___The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case leaves intact a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that, though Weiss' workplace behavior was not prudent, he should receive another jury trial to determine if he was wrongfully dismissed. Neither Weiss nor REN Laboratories were satisfied with that decision.
___Attorneys for the company told the Miami Herald they were "between a rock and a hard place" in Weiss' case, since he was a supervisor and some of the people who felt harassed by his proselytizing were working for him.
___The company also said other non-religious issues contributed to Weiss' termination.
___Weiss was represented before the Supreme Court by the Rutherford Institute, a conservative group that often represents Christians who feel they have been discriminated against in the workplace, school or public accommodations. Press reports indicated the group had hoped the Supreme Court would use the case to set clearer guidelines for workplace witnessing.
___However, Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, said it would be difficult for the courts to provide clear guidelines to private employers on such matters.
___"These cases are all fact-sensitive," he said. "It is impossible to come up with a bright line between permissible religious expression and religious harassment for all cases."
___Walker said private employers and employees might find helpful guidelines for religious expression in the federal workplace issued in 1997. Those guidelines provide examples of permissible and impermissible religious behavior by government workers.
___For instance, according to the guidelines, handing a gospel tract to a co-worker is permissible unless the worker asked beforehand not to be given the tract. A supervisor requiring employees to accept and read religious materials, however, would be unacceptable under the federal guidelines.
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