I am a big fan of the First Amendment. I have argued against the Smithsonian's decision to remove a controversial video showing ants crawling over a crucifix. I have argued on behalf of Muslims who wanted to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. I have even defended the rights of members of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at military funerals in the name of a God who hates. But I have finally found a religious liberty case I cannot get behind.  2007 photo by Roslan Rahman, AFP/Getty Images  Pilgrimage: Muslims from around the world gather in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for the hajj.  2007 photo by Roslan Rahman, AFP/Getty Images  Pilgrimage: Muslims from around the world gather in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for the hajj.  In August of 2008, less than a year after starting her job as a math teacher at MacArthur Middle School in Berkeley, Ill., a Muslim named Safoorah Khan asked for 19 days of unpaid leave (three weeks plus two weekends) to go on the hajj, or a pilgrimage to Mecca. The school district in this Chicago suburb denied her request. Forced to choose between her religion and her job, Khan chose her religion. She went to Mecca and quit her job.  In our ever-shrinking world, the tentacles of religion touch everything from governmental policy to individual morality to our basic social constructs. It affects the lives of people of great faith  or no faith at all.  This series of weekly columns  launched in 2005  seeks to illuminate the national conversation.  In November 2008, Khan brought a complaint of religious discrimination before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In December 2010, the Justice Department, acting on the EEOC's recommendation, filed suit on her behalf, charging that the Berkeley School District had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by failing to "reasonably accommodate" Khan's religious practices.  In recent weeks, conservatives have attacked the lawsuit as politically motivated, an attempt to curry favor with the Muslim community. Gary Bauer, former president of the Family Research Council, sees the Obama administration's action as yet another effort "to ensure justice mainly for favored political constituencies" — first blacks, then gays and now Muslims. Liberals have responded that such criticism is itself politically motivated — in this case by anti-Islamic bigotry.  Civil rights law says employers must " reasonably accommodate" the religious practices of their employees. This requirement is relatively straightforward when the accommodations are minimal and the religion is familiar.  In the Department of Religion at Boston University, observant Jews on our faculty are permitted to miss classes during the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. But that is only for one or two days at a time. What about cases where the demands of religious exercise are more burdensome on employers?  In Trans World Airlines v. Hardison (1977), an employee asked for Saturdays off after he joined the Worldwide Church of God, whose members strictly observe a Saturday Sabbath. TWA, noting that days off on weekends were determined by a seniority system negotiated under a collective bargaining agreement, said that accommodating Larry Hardison's request would violate the contractual rights of more senior employees. So after he refused to work on Saturdays, TWA fired him. The Supreme Court found for TWA.  Ansonia Board of Education v. Philbrook (1986) also involved an employee — a teacher in this case — from the Worldwide Church of God. The conflict here concerned Ronald Philbrook's obligation to observe holy days that would keep him from working on roughly six school days per year. The Supreme Court ruled against Philbrook, finding that employers do not need to offer the most reasonable accommodation. "Any reasonable accommodation by the employer is sufficient to meet its accommodation obligation," wrote the court.  Boston University law professor Jay Wexler said the Supreme Court probably should have decided both these cases differently, but he doesn't think Khan has a prayer. When it comes to Title VII reasonable accommodation cases, the nation's highest court has been "really stingy." And the accommodation Khan asked for went far beyond what either Hardison or Philbrook was requesting. This case, Wexler concluded, is "not even close."  Every case turns on a combination of law and facts, all refracted through the prism of the interpretations of the judges hearing it. Tweak the facts a bit, and the decision can go in a very different direction. But what exactly are the facts in this case?  In terms of the school, Khan was still in her first full year of employment. The days she wanted off fell in the grading period at the end of the semester. And she was one of only two math lab instructors at her school.  In terms of Islam, the hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and any Muslim who is financially and physically able to make the journey is obliged to do so. But Muslims must perform this obligation only once in a lifetime, so Khan might have waited. Because the Muslim calendar is lunar rather than solar, the dates for the hajj would have fallen during summer vacation a decade or so down the road.  But Khan's attorney, Kamran Memon, told me that "Muslims are required to make the hajj as soon as they can." If you are able to go but you put it off, and then because of poor health or economic difficulties are unable to do so before you pass away, then "you die as a sinner," he said.  Memon admitted that "19 days sounds like a long time," but the attorney insisted that, from a legal perspective, that "doesn't really matter." What matters is whether the employer makes a reasonable accommodation, and in this case, he said, it made none.  "They never negotiated," Memon contended. "They just said no." And he believes that the school board members did so not out of hostility to Islam but out of ignorance: "I think they just thought it was something she wanted to do for fun, and they just didn't realize how serious it was for her."  I am very sympathetic to Khan. The hajj is an obligation for all Muslims, and apparently Khan believed she was obliged to undertake it immediately. I also know from my own research and writing that most Americans are horribly ignorant of virtually all the world's religions, so it would not surprise me if school officials acted here out of religious illiteracy. Finally, we are in the midst of an anti-Islamic era in American history that I believe will embarrass virtually all future Americans, so I hate to come out on the side of pundits who are speaking out of hatred or ignorance of Islam.  Given the facts and the law as I understand them, however, I believe that Khan and the Justice Department are overreaching here. Nineteen days is a long time to leave schoolchildren (who also have rights) without a teacher, particularly at the end of a semester. And while it is troubling to hear that the district did not even negotiate with Khan — a charge to which district officials refused to respond — it is hard to see how this request could have been reasonably accommodated.  Nevertheless, I hope that the lesson learned from this case is not that Muslims are seeking special privileges, which the Obama administration is aiding and abetting. A more appropriate takeaway is that our existing laws and customs are skewed sharply toward the beliefs and practices of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. If we don't want our First Amendment religion protections to become a dead letter, we need to learn as a society about the religious traditions of other Americans (Muslims included) and find ways to accommodate them.  Religious minorities must learn, in turn, that there are some cases where American law cannot accommodate them without infringing on the rights of others.  Stephen Prothero is a religion professor at Boston University and the author of the book God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter.  , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor  . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to  . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to  We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button.
Though 19 days off for a religious event is pushing the law, American society still needs to do a better job of accommodating minority faiths.