Religious Rows on Pronoun Policy, Weekend Work Loom in New Year

As Covid-19 vaccine exemption lawsuits wane, other religious worker accommodations will drive both private litigation and government enforcement in the year ahead over some employees’ beliefs clashing with protections for their LGBTQ+ colleagues.

Expiring employer mandates and ticking limitations clocks are slowing worker litigation over unsuccessful vaccine-related exemption requests. But one lingering effect of the pandemic is how social media raised workers’ awareness of religious accommodation possibilities, said King & Spalding LLP partner Anne Dana, who defends employers in bias cases.

Unlike vaccine cases, worker lawsuits alleging employers’ pronoun policies go against their religious beliefs show no signs of slowing down in 2026, especially in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision that raised the bar for undue hardship defenses, attorneys told Bloomberg Law. Judges are already wrestling with how to apply that decision—Groff v. DeJoy—in bias suits over pronoun policies.

Many employers use internal sites to share workplace news and give workers a platform to respond. Some have already faced litigation from religious employees disciplined or fired for negative intranet posts about LGBTQ+ people.

And, as more workers learn of their rights through online discussions and share details about their own views, there will likely be an uptick in claims arising from employees “posting personal beliefs on their social media accounts,” which probably won’t be limited to religious discrimination suits, Dana said.

Employers could see federal enforcement actions too as the Trump administration pursues its own attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and promises a heightened focus on religious discrimination. Practitioners also predict an influx of suits seeking accommodations for workers whose schedules conflict with their religious observances.

Religion and Gender

President Donald Trump issued an executive order upon retaking office in January stating that the federal government would recognize only “two sexes, male and female,” and targeting what his order called “gender ideology extremism.” Similarly, some workers say their faith teaches that there are only two genders and they’re set in stone at birth, preventing them from complying with employer policies on using the pronouns that match someone’s gender identity.

Many of the extant cases involve school employees suing over policies aimed at supporting transgender students. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit revived an orchestra teacher’s faith-based challenge to a pronoun rule in August. The Fourth Circuit heard a similar case involving a substitute teacher in October but has yet to rule. District judges in California have advanced some pronoun-linked religious bias cases and shut down others.

“We’ve definitely seen those cases bubble up where there’s at least a purported conflict between somebody’s religious beliefs and company policy that’s related to anti-discrimination laws,” said Michelle Roberts Gonzales, a partner at Hogan Lovells whose practice includes counseling employers on discrimination issues.

New suits keep popping up. But courts might not “get a groundswell of” them, Roberts Gonzales said. Even before this kind of clash makes it to a courtroom, “those are often very challenging issues for employers because they’re dealing with different employee populations” with different beliefs and feelings, she added.

We’ll likely see more instances of “those two groups asserting claims that come up against one another” in the year ahead, said Dana. Employers should “be on high alert” for employees’ faith-based objections to corporate DEI trainings and carefully consider employee accommodation requests given enforcement risks, she added.

If employers have policies on pronoun use, they should expect litigation, said Michigan State University law professor Frank Ravitch. “I think the EEOC will jump all over those.”

The agency, under Trump-appointed Chair Andrea Lucas, has pulled out of cases pursuing the discrimination claims of transgender workers and increased its pursuit of religious discrimination cases after a Trump executive order aimed at rooting out purported anti-Christian bias in the federal government.

So far, the EEOC’s litigation on behalf of Christians focuses on “mostly socially conservative” believers, Ravitch said, adding he wasn’t aware of any cases “on behalf of more progressive Christians.”

Weekend Work, Hardship

Courts are still wrestling with accommodations for workers who say their employers scheduled them for shifts that conflict with their religious obligations—including whether unpaid leave is an acceptable approach—and judges could soon have more chances to weigh in.

Dana said she expects to see more employees asking for religious accommodations tied to weekend work.

But it’s too soon to tell if the government’s announced priority shift ends up “encouraging private litigation,” Roberts Gonzales said.

Groff v. DeJoy made it tougher for employers to claim that accommodating someone’s religious beliefs—by letting them skip vaccines, find workarounds for referring to transgender students, or schedule shifts around days of religious observance—poses an undue hardship.

It makes sense for claims over weekend work to increase following Groff, Ravitch said. Cases that evaluate accommodations for Sabbath observance in terms of undue hardship “really could benefit religious minorities,” he added.

To the EEOC’s credit, Ravitch said, it’s already filed suits to protect the rights of Muslim workers denied accommodations for Friday services, along with Jewish employees and members of Christian denominations that observe a Saturday Sabbath, such as Seventh-day Adventists. It’s “not all one way, but it’s heavily one way,” he said.

The undue hardship defense also plays a role in pronoun-related cases. The orchestra teacher secured another shot at his claims in part because the Seventh Circuit said it was unclear whether letting him call all students by their last names posed a hardship. The substitute teacher in the Fourth Circuit case also argued that her school could accommodate her by letting her stick to names and avoid pronouns.

Schools have a strong undue hardship argument based on student welfare for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 claims, Ravitch said.

“The psychological impact of discrimination on transgender students is devastating,” he added, pointing to suicide rates linked to peer bullying. “If there’s an alternative that wouldn’t be stigmatizing, then okay, but I don’t know how that happens.”