New Policy for Federal Workers and Religious Expressions

On July 18, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management outlined a new policy in a memorandum titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace,” addressing employer’s rights to various forms of religious speech.  While the policy memo only affects federal workers, and does not change applicable law, the policy implications may ultimately apply to the private sector as well.

The gist of the policy begins with “agencies should allow personal religious expression by federal employees to the greatest extent possible unless such expression would impose an undue hardship on business operations.”  This is interpreted to mean that employees must be allowed to engage in religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in non-religious private expression, although the employer may impose restrictions on the time, place and manner, and may require that employees perform official work during on-duty hours.

The policy specifies that employees should be “permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of religiously significant nature. . . on their desk, on their person, and in their assigned work spaces.”  While an agency may restrict all posters, it may not single out religious posters.  

The policy goes on to say that agencies should allow employees to “engage in individual or communal religious expressions in both formal and informal settings alone or with federal employees,” as long as it is not “during on-duty time.”  

Employees may engage in conversation about religious topics with fellow employees, including “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” so long as those attempts are not harassing.  The same concept generally applies to supervisors.

While the EEOC has long recognized that employees have a religious right to proselytize, it has been also suggested that proselytizing cannot cross the line into unwelcome or harassing conduct.  

Editor’s Note:  While the new memo for federal workers is not entirely new, it does emphasize the religious rights of employees, including proselytizing co-workers.  A concern of many employers is that such proselytizing can lead to harassment claims by co-workers.  With these and other policies pertaining to accommodation, employers should have an accommodation policy relating to religious accommodation including concepts relating to harassment.

This article is part of our September 2025 Newsletter. 

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