Friday, April 20, 2007

Was School Nurse's New Assignment Accommodation or Retaliation?

A lawsuit filed yesterday in Sandusky, Ohio poses the interesting question of the line between religious accommodation and retaliation against an employee because of her religious beliefs. Today's Lorain (OH) Morning Journal reports that public school nurse Maria T. Sulewski filed suit against the Erie County General Health District claiming that her change in job assignments was retaliation for her religious objections to participating in a presentation "supporting birth control, safe sex or related matters". Erie County Health Commissioner Peter Schade said that Sulewski's job reassignment was an accommodation so she would not have to deal with making sex-education presentations. Sulewski's attorney says that the presentations were a very small part of her former assignment, so that she could have been accommodated by merely having someone else fill in for her on those assignments.