A US government agency is suing Apple for allegedly discriminating against a Jewish worker – forcing him to work on his Sabbath and later firing him because of his religion, according to a suit filed in Virginia federal court.
The suit alleged Tyler Steele, a 16-year employee at Apple’s Reston, Va., store, consistently received positive performance reviews during his time as an Apple “genius,” helping customers troubleshoot tech issues on their devices.
Starting in 2023, after Steele converted to Judaism, the store manager told the worker that he smelled of body odor and ordered him not to discuss the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel with his coworkers, according to the lawsuit filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The manager also denied Steele’s accommodation request not to work Fridays and Saturdays in order to observe Sabbath, claiming Apple’s new scheduling policy prohibited him from having both days off, according to the lawsuit.
The Jewish Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday.
Since he feared losing his job, Steele worked on the Sabbath, the suit said.
Around the same time, Apple started disciplining Steele for allegedly violating the company’s grooming policies, according to the lawsuit.
Apple fired Steele in January 2024, claiming he violated its grooming standards again, according to the lawsuit. He was terminated shortly after reminding his supervisor of an upcoming day off for religious reasons, the suit added.
“Employees should not have to violate their religious beliefs to keep their jobs or live in fear of retribution because they requested an accommodation,” Debra Lawrence, EEOC Philadelphia’s regional attorney, said in a statement.
Apple did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The EEOC is accusing Apple of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to accommodate religious practices, discriminating against employees based on their religion and retaliating against an employee for complaining about discriminatory actions.
It is seeking unspecified back pay and damages for Steele.
The agency regularly sues employers for discrimination, but it has taken new aim at cases involving religious discrimination under Acting Chair Andrea Lucas – a conservative appointed to the role by President Trump.
In August, the EEOC released a press release boasting about its efforts to “defend the religious liberty of American workers” throughout the first 200 days of the Trump administration.
In a statement in the press release, Lucas said that during President Biden’s administration, “religious protections too often took a backseat to woke policies.”
