Man asks Supreme Court for help, says he was fired for missing work to observe his religion

Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla.—In 2011, Darrell Patterson was fired from his job at an Orlando Walgreen’s Customer Care Center for missing work on a Saturday.

Patterson is a Seventh-day Adventist, a Protestant Christian denomination that observes Saturday, the seventh day of the week, as the Sabbath. Practicing Seventhday Adventists are prohibited from working from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday—something Patterson’s employers at Walgreens knew.

So when they fired him, Patterson sued, claiming religious discrimination. But the courts sided with Walgreens at both the district and appeal levels, saying the employer had done enough to accommodate Patterson in his six years of employment with the pharmacy chain.

How much is enough and what constitutes religious discrimination may now be something for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider. Patterson has filed the case with the nation’s highest court, seeking the first court decision in 30 years to address the Sabbath. “A person that has a religious conviction has really been put in a place to make a choice between their religious conviction and bringing home a paycheck and taking care of their families—a really pointed and harsh predicament to put anybody in,” Patterson said.

From the time he began his employment with Walgreens in 2005, he said Patterson said he was clear with his employers that he would be unavailable during the Sabbath period, indicating it in his employment application and via a letter from his pastor. He also signed an acknowledgement saying he understand he “must be available to work any scheduled shift,” according to the Orlando district court’s 2016 decision. Over the years, Patterson’s job schedule rarely coincided with Saturday and when it did, Walgreens allowed him to swap schedules with his coworkers.