A major supermarket chain based in California is being sued by a former employee who claims he was discriminated against because of his religious beliefs, AgapePress reports. Phillip Way claims he was hired by Randall’s Food Markets in May 2004 with the agreement he would not work on Sundays due to his religious beliefs. But Way claims he was denied promotions and employment benefits because of those beliefs, and was eventually fired because he was unable to work on Sundays. The Liberty Legal Institute has filed a lawsuit against Randall’s on behalf of Way. Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Legal, says the company’s actions violate the law. Randall’s, he adds, “should be ashamed for engaging in such blatant and hostile religious discrimination.”
Liberty Letters Comment: One of the Ten Commandments — “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy … Six days thou shalt do all thy work, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, thou shalt rest from thy labors” — contains within it a protection for religious freedom. Were every employer to honor this Higher Law, so far as his employers were concerned, more Americans would be free to practice their religion as they pleased.
Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin, by contrast, intentionally initiated rotating shift work, seven days per week, so as to make it near impossible for those few who were still secretly practicing their faith (despite sanctions, persecution, imprisonment, and merciless slaughter).
When will employers learn that by being open on Sundays, and thus mandating a certain percentages of their employees to work on that Holy Day, they are following in Stalin’s footprints — for the love of money — displaying indifference, if not outright hostility toward a man’s faith and the religious freedom our forefathers bequeathed to us at so great a price?
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