{"id":843,"date":"2008-08-01T17:59:32","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T17:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug.php"},"modified":"2008-08-01T17:59:32","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T17:59:32","slug":"nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","title":{"rendered":"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Kate Coscarelli<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\nNEWARK, N.J. (RNS) Making jokes and comments about a person&#8217;s religion can create a &#8220;humiliating and painful environment&#8221; and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey&#8217;s highest court ruled Thursday (July 31).<br \/>\nThe New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone&#8217;s faith &#8212; even as a form of ribbing or &#8220;breaking of chops&#8221; &#8212; cannot be tolerated in the workplace.<br \/>\nClarifying anti-discrimination laws, the court declared that a person claiming religious-based harassment does not face a higher legal hurdle than people who claim they were discriminated against because of their sex or race.<br \/>\n&#8220;It is necessary that our courts recognize that the religion-based harassing conduct that took place &#8230; in this `workplace culture&#8217; is as offensive as other forms of discriminatory, harassing conduct outlawed in this state,&#8221; Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for a unanimous court.<br \/>\nThe ruling holds the borough of Haddonfield in Camden County accountable for discrimination claims made by a Jewish police officer whose co-workers made crass comments &#8212; claimed to be poor attempts at humor &#8212; about his ethnicity and pasted stickers of the flags of Israel and Germany on his locker.<br \/>\nThe decision is an important victory for all workers enforcing the principle of equality, said Jon Green, who represented the state chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association.<br \/>\nAttorney Clifford Van Syoc, who represented the officer, said, &#8220;There is no reason to make fun of people&#8217;s religion or race or anything.&#8221;<br \/>\nAdded Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New Jersey, &#8220;It sends a clear and unequivocal message that anti-Semitism has to be treated with the same degree of severity as racial harassment.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe attorney representing Haddonfield warned the decision would have a chilling effect. &#8220;The court has raised the bar on the hostile work environment &#8212; now you can&#8217;t even joke in the workplace,&#8221; Mario Iavicoli said.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kate Coscarelli Religion News Service NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) Making jokes and comments about a person&#8217;s religion can create a &#8220;humiliating and painful environment&#8221; and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey&#8217;s highest court ruled Thursday (July 31). The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone&#8217;s faith &#8212; even as a form of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Kate Coscarelli Religion News Service NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) Making jokes and comments about a person&#8217;s religion can create a &#8220;humiliating and painful environment&#8221; and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey&#8217;s highest court ruled Thursday (July 31). The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone&#8217;s faith &#8212; even as a form of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-01T17:59:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter","og_description":"By Kate Coscarelli Religion News Service NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) Making jokes and comments about a person&#8217;s religion can create a &#8220;humiliating and painful environment&#8221; and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey&#8217;s highest court ruled Thursday (July 31). The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone&#8217;s faith &#8212; even as a form of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-08-01T17:59:32+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug","name":"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-01T17:59:32+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-01T17:59:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/08\/nj-court-says-faith-is-no-laug#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"N.J. Court Says Faith is No Laughing Matter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}