TSA Guilty Of Religious Bias

By ARI PAUL

A fired U.S. Transportation Security Administration worker must be reinstated, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled, affirming that the agency discriminated against him on religious grounds.

JOHN GAGE: 'Disturbing behavior by TSA.'

Renaldo Moore was a TSA screener at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas when in May and June of 2004 he was denied a work schedule giving him Sundays off, which he had requested because he is a Roman Catholic. That August, he was fired.

An Administrative Law Judge ruled in favor of Mr. Moore, who had been working as an airport screener since 2003. Mr. Moore was awarded back-pay with interest as well as benefits he might have acquired, in addition to his being reinstated.

The TSA argued that Mr. Moore's religious conviction was not legitimate, claiming that because he lived out of wedlock he was not a devout Catholic and that his choice not to work on the Sabbath was strictly personal. The judge did not agree.

Logical Optional

"The U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the Commission, has long held that the sincerity of one's religious beliefs are personal," Administrative Judge Dennis Carter said in his decision. "They don't have to be logical, consistent and identical to those of the majority of a particular faith."

Mr. Moore is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, even though TSA workers do not have the right to collectively bargain. AFGE said that this was the second case in which the EEOC had ruled the TSA wronged a worker on religious grounds. Among their other criticisms of the agency, AFGE officials have maintained that more than half of all EEOC cases brought against the Department of Homeland Security involve TSA workers.

AFGE attorney Gony F. Goldberg said that TSA changes its workers' schedules every six months.

"In a nation which claims to encourage the exercising of religious freedom, TSA's behavior, as an agent of the government, is particularly disturbing," AFGE National President John Gage said in a statement. "This case underscores what we have known to be true since TSA was created - only a strong union voice in the workplace will protect the rights of these American workers."