A federal workplace civil rights agency has brought a lawsuit against a Texas-based Chick-fil-A franchise operator, accusing the company of unlawful religious discrimination after it fired a manager who requested Saturdays off for her religious Sabbath observance. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the independent federal body tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination laws in US workplaces, announced the legal action against Hatch Trick Inc. in an official press statement.
The affected employee, a member of the United Church of God which recognizes the Sabbath as falling on Saturday rather than the more common Sunday observance held by most Christian denominations, first made her request for Saturday scheduling accommodation during her initial job interview in August 2023, the EEOC alleges. For the first several months of her employment as a delivery operations manager at the Austin, Texas Chick-fil-A location owned by Hatch Trick, the franchisee honored the request, with the employee working 45 to 50 hours weekly across Monday to Friday, plus occasional additional shifts on Sunday. That changed in February 2024, when management reversed course and ordered the woman to begin working Saturdays, according to the commission’s court filing.
When the employee reaffirmed her need for religious accommodation and refused the new scheduling requirement, company leadership informed her that she could not retain her higher-paying managerial role if she could not work Saturdays, the lawsuit claims. Instead, Hatch Trick offered her a demotion to an entry-level delivery driver position, which came with reduced hourly wages, fewer benefits, and shorter scheduled hours. The worker offered multiple alternative reasonable accommodations to keep her management role, including arranging for a trained driver to fill her dispatch duties on Saturdays and adjusting her schedule to only work after sundown on the Sabbath. After she rejected the demotion offer, the franchisee terminated her employment, the EEOC found.
“Religious discrimination in the workplace is unlawful, and employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees’ sincerely held beliefs,” said Norma Guzman, director of the EEOC’s San Antonio Field Office, in a statement accompanying the lawsuit filing.
The case draws a particular note of irony from Chick-fil-A’s own well-known corporate policy of closing all locations on Sundays specifically to allow staff to observe the Sabbath if they wish. The company’s official website states that Sunday closing gives employees time “to rest, enjoy time with their families and loved ones or worship if they choose.”
When contacted for comment by the BBC, corporate Chick-fil-A declined to provide a statement, but told ABC News affiliate KVUE that as a franchise system, all individual hiring and employment decisions are the exclusive responsibility of independent restaurant owners. The BBC has also reached out to Hatch Trick Inc. for a response to the EEOC’s allegations, and had not received a reply as of reporting.