CHICAGO – A born-again Christian who sued General Motors Corp. when the automaker denied his request to form a company-sponsored Christian group lost his appeal Thursday in a lawsuit claiming religious discrimination.
A federal appeals panel in Chicago concurred with a lower court that GM did not discriminate against John Moranski, a 43-year-old computer engineer, because the company would have taken the same action if Moranski had advocated a different religion.
To promote diversity, GM sponsors affinity groups for women, gay men and lesbians, racial and ethnic minorities, veterans and disabled people. But the automaker prohibits groups that advocate particular religious or political positions.
Moranski’s lawyer, David C. Gibbs III of Seminole, Fla., argued in October before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that religious faith is the “main identifying characteristic” for employees such as Moranski, similar to race, gender or sexual orientation.
To deny them the opportunity given others to network and access company resources is discriminatory, Gibbs said.
“This argument does not help Moranski,” the court stated in a nine-page ruling Thursday. “It has no basis in Title VII” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
The act, which requires equal treatment within categories, cannot be stretched to require “cross-categorical comparisons when evaluating Title VII claims,” the ruling stated.
“(Moranski’s) logic would mean that a company would violate Title VII if it recognized an affinity group on the basis of religion but not sex, or granted status to a group on the basis of sex but not to one based on ethnicity,” the ruling said.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Equal Employment Advisory Council, a group representing 325 major corporations, joined in supporting GM. Their brief argued that requiring companies to permit religious groups would have a chilling effect on affinity groups because some employers would discontinue them altogether.
Most Fortune 500 companies sponsor affinity groups and some, including GM competitor Ford Motor Co., allow religious groups.
Moranski, a Chicago native who works for GM in Pontiac, Mich., said in an interview in October that he discovered GM’s prohibition against religion at work in 2000 when he asked permission to publicize an observance for National Day of Prayer. He had hoped to organize a gathering similar to one he participated in while working as a civilian employee for the U.S. Navy.
Undeterred when the company refused his request, he researched GM’s diversity policies including guidelines for affinity groups and submitted a proposal for a nondenominational Christian group, which GM denied.
A federal district court last year dismissed his lawsuit, and he appealed. None of the parties in the appeal could be reached for comment Thursday.
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AP-NY-12-29-05 1913EST
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