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Let's say, I'm starting my own company and consider to hire some people. May I or may I not put the ability to eat bacon as a job requirement for every employee? If I did so, how many lawsuits would I get?

If some candidates don't meet this requirement for some reason, would that be considered a discrimination or would it just look like these candidates do not fit the company's culture?

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    ability or willingness? But if you're looking for a backdoor way of doing religious discrimination of some sort, I've known people who profess to adhere to a particular religion, yet nevertheless are perfectly happy to enjoy a bacon-cheeseburger and a beer ...
    – brhans
    Jul 24, 2019 at 19:46
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    I was just being genuinely curious, as I just happened to have this mental experiment over the lunch. I'm definitely not going to practice this in real life.
    – wintermute
    Jul 24, 2019 at 23:41

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This potentially (i.e. almost certainly) runs afoul of laws against religious discrimination. However, you can have such a requirement provided you make an accommodation for those with sincerely held religious beliefs or practices against bacon-eating. You can also have such a requirement (despite the beliefs) if not having the requirement imposes an undue hardship on the business. For example, if the job is "bacon taste-tester", then there's no reasonable accommodation. This applies to religious objections, since religion is protected class, but not "I don't like bacon" as an objection; nor does this apply to people who object to meat-eating on economic grounds.

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  • Some EEOC laws also do not apply to small businesses, so he may not need to "make an accommodation" at all. A small business, provided it meets certain requirements could advertise a job for a "young white Catholic"without it being illegal.
    – Ron Beyer
    Jul 25, 2019 at 3:41
  • Would a job in the kitchen in a hamburger joint that serves pork-based hamburgers require accommodation as well? This could lead to all kind of accommodations to align with people's beliefs (such as mine where I cannot bear the see color blue in a building and would be offended if someone forced me to (an intentionally extreme example))
    – WoJ
    Mar 27, 2021 at 19:47

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