From a press release last month, just posted on Westlaw:

N.C. Detective Agency, a Durham-based security company, will pay $65,231 in compensatory damages and back pay, and take other corrective actions to voluntarily resolve a religious discrimination investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

The EEOC's investigation found reasonable cause to believe that an employee requested to be excused from work due to a Muslim religious holiday, but the request was denied. The company was aware of the employee's need for a religious accommodation but did not engage in the legally required interactive process, and instead terminated her in June 2025 when she did not report for duty.

And from another press release two weeks later, also just posted on Westlaw:

Reynolds IGA Foodliner, Inc., owner and operator of a chain of grocery stores, will pay $65,000 and provide other equitable relief to settle a religious discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

According to the suit, shortly after she was hired as a deli clerk at the Piggly Wiggly store in Hazlehurst, Georgia, the employee requested Sundays off to observe her Sabbath. The employee's supervisor denied the request, claiming that, if the store gave the employee Sundays off, it would have to do the same for all other employees. The employee continued to request the accommodation, and the company fired her in January 2025.

More from the second press release:

"Employers cannot deny religious accommodation requests simply for fear of upsetting other employees," said Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOC's Atlanta District. "The EEOC remains committed to enforcing federal anti-discrimination law and protecting employees' rights to religious freedom."

Darrell E. Graham, director of the EEOC's Atlanta District, said, "Employers must thoughtfully consider each request for religious accommodation on an individual, case-by-case basis and otherwise make good-faith efforts to accommodate their employees' religious beliefs. Employers must be aware of their obligations under federal law to provide reasonable religious accommodations absent undue hardship."

Finally, from a third press release from last month (it was published in between the first two, but was again just posted on Westlaw); this one involves a lawsuit and not a settlement:

Blue Bell Creameries, Inc., a Brenham, Texas-based frozen snack manufacturer and distributor with a production facility in Sylacauga, Alabama, unlawfully terminated a Jewish body shop technician soon after he requested a beard‑related religious accommodation, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.

Even supporters of bans on religious discrimination by private employers might debate whether employers should be required to give religious exemptions from generally applicable rules (exemptions that could themselves be seen as discrimination in favor of religious observers). But Congress has indeed mandated such exemptions: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended in 1972, generally requires employers to accommodate religious objectors' requests for exemptions from generally applicable work rules, unless doing so would pose an "undue hardship" for the employer.

That extends to time off for religious holidays: Indeed, the leading recent case on the subject, Groff v. DeJoy, involved a Christian employee's request for an exemption from having to work Sundays. And of course it extends, as it must, to all religions.

 

The post $65K Settlements with EEOC Over Failure to Accommodate Muslim and Christian Employees' Religious Days Off appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Senator Darline Graham, appointed to fill the Senate seat of her late brother, Lindsey, gently disagreed with the president’s decision to exempt Russia from the sanctions legislation.

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Andy Burnham's Government has been accused of waging a £500 million "class war" on wealthy councils, slashing funding from rural Tory and Lib Dem areas to bankroll urban Labour Party strongholds.

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In recent years, one of the predominant policy initiatives of the progressive left has been raising the minimum wage in locales around the country. At the same time, left-leaning politicians have sought the elimination of what's known as the tip credit, which allows employers to pay restaurant servers and other tipped employees a lower hourly base wage that they then bolster with gratuities.

Just a few years into this experiment, however, policymakers are showing signs of an about-face on the tip credit's abolition as they grapple with the unfortunate, and predictable, economic results.

In 2022, Washington, D.C., made news headlines when voters passed Initiative 82. As originally designed, it would have repealed the tip credit and required servers to be paid the District's full statutory minimum wage by 2027. (D.C.'s minimum wage was $16.10 per hour in 2022, but has since risen to $18.40 due to inflation indexation.) Prior to Initiative 82, D.C. servers could be paid a $5.35 tipped wage, so long as they earned enough tips to make up the difference between the lower tipped wage and the higher traditional minimum wage.

D.C.'s Initiative 82 was just the beginning. One Fair Wage, a progressive group that lobbies against subminimum wages, quarterbacked an all-out push to eliminate the tip credit in jurisdictions across America. Chicago became the second prominent city to follow suit. States like New York, Connecticut, and Illinois also quickly saw legislation introduced to eliminate the tip credit at a statewide level. (Apart from this recent wave, a small handful of American states—including California, Oregon, and Alaska—have long operated without a tip credit).

But just when it seemed like momentum against the tip credit had reached its apex, progressive politicians started to see the writing on the wall. In the aftermath of the tip credit's repeal, D.C. saw a close to 5 percent decline in full-service restaurant jobs. Tipped worker earnings also dropped by just under $12 million—likely a result, at least in part, of restaurants reducing hours for staff in the face of higher labor costs. At the same time, many D.C. restaurants began implementing service fees or so-called auto-gratuity policies that added mandatory 10-20 percent charges onto customers' bills.

Mugged by this economic reality, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called for the full repeal of Initiative 82. Ultimately, the D.C. Council settled for a partial repeal in 2025, maintaining at least some semblance of a tipped wage that sits below the traditional minimum wage into the years ahead (although the tipped wage eventually rises to 75 percent of the traditional wage by 2034). This was a familiar story: The council had previously repealed Initiative 77, a near-identical attempt to abolish the tipped wage that voters passed in 2018.

After Chicago moved to eliminate the tip credit, the Illinois Restaurant Association found that 89 percent of Windy City restaurants raised menu prices; another 79 percent responded by reducing worker hours. Again bowing to economic reality, the progressive Chicago City Council voted to freeze the tip credit's planned elimination, only to see the effort vetoed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Eventually, a compromise was brokered to at least pause the tip credit at its current level for two years—which punts the issue until after Johnson stands for election again, allowing a potential successor to endorse a more lasting reversal.

In Michigan, a 2024 state supreme court ruling set the tip credit on the path toward elimination by 2030. But state lawmakers intervened last year, deciding to maintain a 50 percent tip credit in perpetuity after 2031. Notably, Michigan is currently governed by a Democratic trifecta in the governorship and both houses of the Legislature. The tip credit's revival garnered key support from Republican lawmakers to pass in a bipartisan fashion, before being signed into law by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

While progressive efforts to eliminate the tip credit may be motivated by an earnest desire to ensure waiters are paid more, the math isn't that simple. Requiring a server to be paid a $16 traditional minimum wage—up from a $5 tipped wage—might appear to raise their pay on paper. But this fails to consider several important factors.

Under our "No Taxes on Tips" new normal, raising the minimum wage for servers could lead to a partial reduction in tips, which under certain scenarios can result in less take-home pay for waiters once the taxman takes his cut. If more server earnings come in the form of "auto-gratuity" policies—which are treated as taxed wages under the law—then the tax repercussions may grow even grimmer.

But more broadly, these laws attempt to subvert basic economics. As of 2025, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that D.C. restaurants shed over 1,600 jobs in aftermath of Initiative 82; meanwhile, between 2022 and 2025, restaurant job growth in the District declined by more than 8 percent. This is just one example. The fallout is the inevitable result of restaurants responding to labor costs that suddenly skyrocket, forcing establishments to cut worker hours and sometimes transition to quick-service models that require less hourly staff. And that's to say nothing of the diners who bear the cost with higher prices and new service fees.

"We're watching a beloved bar back, a beloved busser, a dishwasher have their jobs taken away," D.C. restaurant worker Valerie Graham told Reason in 2024. "Not because our owner-operator is an evil billionaire but because they're an independent business owner who had to make some business decisions and there's a callousness with which our industry is talked about."

To be sure, the tip credit has only survived in modified and reduced form in D.C., Chicago, and Michigan—and in the case of Chicago, the about-face is only temporary. But the partial reversals show the tip credit's elimination is not a foregone conclusion. Economic reality continues to rear its head.

The post Some Progressives Tried To Abolish the Tipped Minimum Wage. Now They're Backtracking. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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