Canadian arbitrator takes up religious objections to biometrics

Another case of religious beliefs interfering with the adoption of biometric technologies, this time from our neighbors up north. According to LexisNexis, a labor law arbitrator in Ontario has decided in favor of three employees who refused to submit to a hand-scanning access regime. As members of the Pentacostal Church, which as a matter of doctrine sets aside cooperation with biometric devices as a matter of individual conscience, the employees claimed to believe that cooperation would result in uttter damnation from the so-called “Mark of the Beast” predicted in the Book of Revelation. The company in question, noting that the church did not require such refusal, acccused the employees of insubordination and, after a series of disciplinary actions, fired them.

At issue in arbitration was “to what extent must the employees’ beliefs objectively conform to the precepts of the Pentecostal church for those beliefs to be protected” by religious descrimination laws, Lexis reported. In this case, the arbitrator ruled that because the employees were willing to parrticipate in all other aspects of the company’s security systems, and because they had expressed objection to biometrics as part various government-issued identity systems, they had overcome the requirement that “asserted religious belief is in good faith, not fictitious, not capricious, and not an artifice.” As a result, the arbitrator held that the biometric portion of the company’s access control system violated anti-discimination laws. To fix the problem, he instructed the company to consider an alternative suggested by the employees: that they be permitted to use the same system as other employees, just without the biometric features. This, the arbitartor ruled, was not an “undue hardship.”