Legal Question in Disability Law in Massachusetts

Employers must accommodate their employees' religious beliefs -- within reason.

They may have to take an employee's religion into account when making certain workplace decisions.

The law prohibits Employer from discriminating based on the fact of someone's religion (for example, that an employee is Jewish or Catholic or Baptist). However, it also requires Employer to make allowances for a person's religious practices and beliefs (for example, that an employee needs time after lunch to pray or that an employee needs Saturdays off to observe his or her Sabbath).

Employer can't fail to promote someone because he or she is Muslim, for example.

Employers must work with employees to make it possible for them to practice their religious beliefs -- within reason. This might mean not scheduling an employee to work on his or her Sabbath day or relaxing the dress code so that an employee can wear religious garments.

In legal parlance, these allowances are called accommodations. Employers are required to accommodate religious practices and beliefs unless doing so would cause its business too much hardship. For instance, if changing an employee's schedule to accommodate a religious belief would wreak havoc with the company's seniority system and cause severe morale problems among other employees, Employer might not have to accommodate the worker.

I would certainly report the action to MCAD, which governs such matters. http://www.mass.gov/mcad/forIndividualsEmployees.html