The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, sued Blue Bell Creameries, alleging that a Jewish body shop technician in the Brenham, Texas, ice cream company’s facility in Alabama was fired after he requested a religious accommodation to keep his beard.
The Sylacauga, Ala., staffer was fired in March 2025, “less than a month after he refused to shave his beard due to his religious beliefs,” the EEOC said.
“Blue Bell’s stated reason for firing the longtime employee, a timekeeping violation, was a pretext for religious discrimination and retaliation and claimed that other workers routinely engaged in the same conduct without repercussion,” the federal agency alleged.
It added that “a supervisor baselessly questioned the sincerity of the worker’s religious beliefs on multiple occasions.”
According to the complaint, the Jewish staffer could not refurbish fiberglass parts, because it “requires an employee to wear a respirator that completely seals and thus an employee cannot have certain types of facial hair.”
He claimed that none of his coworkers were required to shave their beards after a respirator training and mask fit test.
The safety coordinator told the Jewish employee “that it did not matter that he is Jewish, since the Occupation Safety and Health Administration was ‘above that,’” and suggested that he did not believe the employee was Jewish,” the complaint alleges.
The plant manager met with the staffer to tell him that the company’s lawyers advised that he “must be accommodated with a mask that would fit over his beard,” and an appropriate mask and filter were ordered. Then the employee was fired for “theft of company time,” according to the complaint.
The federal agency filed the lawsuit against Blue Bell Creameries in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama “after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process,” it said.
The agency is asking the court to block the company from subjecting employees to religious discrimination or retaliation for requesting religious accommodations and provide back pay to the fired employee, as well as other financial compensation. The lawsuit also asks that the man be reinstated.
“Religious discrimination is illegal under federal law,” stated Marsha Rucker, a regional attorney for the federal agency in Birmingham.
