Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Michigan Law Review

Abstract

The prohibitions against discrimination in employment, and specifically the ban on religious discrimination, embodied in title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 comprise a noble venture. The temptation in implementing that venture, of course, is to paint with broad strokes. But the delicate relationship between the religious and the secular calls for a precision of analysis in the title VII field which, if the legal wranglings in Dewey are any example, has been seriously wanting to date. To say that the definition of discrimination is one of effect is surely to prove too much, and the notion of accommodation is no less troublesome. Such formulas may turn a few to religious conversion; however, they will also undoubtedly have disruptive effects on the uniform administration of collective bargaining contracts. Even assuming these problems to be less grave than here portrayed, still it is difficult to fathom the apparent subjugation of the secular to the religious by the rule of accommodation formulated by the EEOC in conjunction with religious-discrimination cases under title VII. The EEOC rule is a curious departure from the traditional view that "we must accommodate our idiosyncrasies, religious as well as secular, to the compromises necessary in communal life ... " Equally disturbing is the enunciation of the election-of-remedies doctrine by the Sixth Circuit in Dewey in its aborted attempt to glean the proper perspective for the arbitration process in the handling of title VII claims. While some deferral rule may indeed be warranted under certain circumstances in order to strike a workable balance between the role of the arbitrators and the courts in the adjudication of title VII claims, surely Dewey-in which the issue of the alleged title VII claim was never really litigated in arbitration -was not the proper setting for resort to this principle of law. Furthermore, there is the more troublesome question, which was ignored by the Sixth Circuit, whether arbitrators should be entrusted with the final and binding adjudication of alleged title VII claims, especially when no legal safeguards presently exist to protect individual claimants who may be adversely affected by the invocation of the election-of-remedies doctrine.

First Page

599

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2307/1287526

Volume

69

Publication Date

1971

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