Raley’s accused of religious discrimination

A federal civil rights agency has accused the Raley’s supermarket chain of violating a clerk’s religious freedom by firing her after she refused to work on an evening when she regularly attended worship services.

Supervisors at a Raley’s store in Chico had assured Jennifer Webb that she would not be scheduled to work on Wednesday evenings or Sundays before 4 p.m. so she could take part in Jehovah’s Witnesses services, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Sacramento.

But after keeping its word for six months, the EEOC said, the store scheduled Webb to work from 2 to 11 p.m. on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 2014. When she objected, a supervisor told her that her request for religious accommodations “didn’t matter” on the evening before the holiday, the agency said.

Webb reported to work at 2 p.m., told a supervisor at 5 p.m. that she had to leave, and was immediately fired, the commission said. It said at least two other clerks who were working that evening could have been asked to cover the rest of her shift, and eight others who were off that day could have been called to fill in.

“Federal law requires employers to make reasonable adjustments to work schedules and rules to allow employees to practice their religion, barring an undue hardship,” William Tamayo, director of the EEOC’s San Francisco regional office, said in a statement. “Raley’s clearly had the resources to have easily accommodated Ms. Webb by simply swapping schedules.”

“It hurt so much to have to choose between my faith and my job,” Webb said in a statement released by the commission.

The suit accuses Raley’s of discriminating against Webb because of her religion and illegally retaliating against her for exercising her rights. The EEOC seeks an injunction against future religious discrimination, compensation for Webb’s financial losses and emotional distress and punitive damages for “malicious and reckless conduct.”

Raley’s is based in West Sacramento and operates more than 130 stores in California and Nevada. Spokeswoman Chelsea Minor said the company is an “equal opportunity employer” and denies any wrongdoing.

Raley’s consistently approved scheduling requests by Webb and other Jehovah’s Witnesses, Minor said. After the company allegedly denied her request on the day before Thanksgiving, Minor said, Webb “left abruptly part way through her ... shift,” then “failed to report to subsequent scheduled shifts and did not respond to Raley’s attempts to contact her to discuss her absences.”