Where anti-discrimination and religious-liberty protections may or may not apply
SB296 does not treat this as discrimination because Utah’s antidiscrimination laws do not apply to employers with fewer than 15 employees. Antidiscrimination laws have consistently allowed small businesses wide discretion over the employees they hire.
• An employee has several “water cooler” conversations at work regarding his beliefs about marriage and family. A supervisor tells him that his anti-gay attitudes are not welcome.
SB296 guarantees that an employee “may express the employee’s religious or moral beliefs and commitments in the workplace in a reasonable, non-disruptive, and non-harassing way on equal terms with similar types of expression of beliefs or commitments allowed by the employer in the workplace, unless the expression is in direct conflict with the essential business-related interests of the employer.”
• An employee regularly makes fun of his LGBT co-worker with crude taunts and mean-spirited putdowns, but claims he’s just telling the truth in the Bible.
Religious liberty is not a shield for harassment. SB296 does not protect the expression of religious or moral beliefs if they are unreasonable, disruptive, or harassing. The example we chose is clearly harassment. But SB296 should not be misused to label an employee’s statement that marriage is between a man and woman as an expression that is unreasonable, disruptive or harassing to LGBT employees.
