Often forgotten is that Title VII protects not only religious employees from being fired for their beliefs, but equally protects nonreligious employees from being fired for refusing to endorse an employer-mandated religion. “What matters in this context is not so much what [the employee’s] own religious beliefs were,” the Seventh Circuit federal court of appeals said in the 1997 Venters v. City of Delphi. What matters is whether the employee was “fired because he did not share or follow his employer’s religious beliefs.”

Woke corporations in America today think they can fire employees for their politics without legal liability. They’re mistaken.

Last month, Disney fired actress Gina Carano after she compared Nazi persecution of Jews to the persecution of conservatives in America today on social media. The company called her post “abhorrent and unacceptable,” declining to explain why her co-star Pedro Pascal remains employed despite his own posts comparing Trump supporters to Nazis. Distinguished science reporter Donald McNeil was recently ousted from The New York Times for vocalizing the n-word when answering a high school student’s question about whether a classmate deserved to be suspended for saying it. Emmanuel Cafferty, a Latino truck driver for San Diego Gas & Electric Company, was fired for accidentally—yes, accidentally—making the “OK” hand gesture used by some white supremacists.

Last week, Coca-Cola reportedly provided online training to its employees teaching them to “try to be less white,” claiming that “to be less white is to: be less oppressive, be less arrogant, be less certain, be less defensive, be less ignorant, be more humble,” and that “white people are socialized to feel that they are inherently superior because they are white.” Coca-Cola later said the video was “not a focus of our company’s curriculum.”

Other examples abound, and they are all cases of religious discrimination—but not in the way you might think.

It’s well established that an employer violates Title VII if it fires an employee because of his religious beliefs. But was Ms. Carano expressing religious beliefs through her social media post? Very unlikely. Nor was Mr. McNeil when he uttered the racial slur, nor was Mr. Cafferty, who said nothing at all. But that’s not the end of the matter.

Often forgotten is that Title VII protects not only religious employees from being fired for their beliefs, but equally protects nonreligious employees from being fired for refusing to endorse an employer-mandated religion. “What matters in this context is not so much what [the employee’s] own religious beliefs were,” the Seventh Circuit federal court of appeals said in the 1997 Venters v. City of Delphi. What matters is whether the employee was “fired because he did not share or follow his employer’s religious beliefs.”

The real question, then, is whether wokeness in America today qualifies as a religion under Title VII. If it does, Ms. Carano has a straightforward claim of religious discrimination—she was fired for refusing to follow an employer-mandated religion.

Surprising as it may seem, the answer to that legal question is almost certainly yes. The Supreme Court’s definition of religion used to require a belief in God, but the Court abandoned that position 60 years ago in Torcaso v. Watkins. Today, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—which administers Title VII—employs a much more expansive definition: “A belief is ‘religious’ for Title VII purposes if it is…a ‘sincere and meaningful’ belief that ‘occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by…God.'” “Religious beliefs include . . . non-theistic ‘moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views.'”

Most secular beliefs don’t qualify because they are only, as the Third Circuit explained in 2017 in Fallon v. Mercy Catholic Medical Center, an “isolated moral teaching”—like objections to the flu vaccine—rather than a “comprehensive system of beliefs about fundamental or ultimate matters,” including ones that give adherents a sense of purpose or a moral code.

A demonstrator wears a protective mask as he holds a placard reading ‘Silence supports violence’ during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd outside the United States Embassy on June 07, 2020 in Madrid, Spain. The death of an African-American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police has sparked protests across the United States, as well as demonstrations of solidarity in many countries around the world.ELY PINEIRO/GETTY
Employing these definitions—which fit wokeness to a tee—courts have repeatedly found non-theistic belief systems to be religious. For example, in Peterson v. Wilmur Communications, the court held that “Creativity,” a non-theistic worldview that adheres to white supremacy as its main axiom, counted as a religion. According to the court, Creativity teaches that its adherents should “live their lives according to the principle that what is good for white people is the ultimate good and what is bad for white people is the ultimate sin.” If Creativity, professing white supremacy, is a religion, then wokeness, professing the opposite, must be too.

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