The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority discriminated against a man when it turned him down for a job as a part-time bus driver because he couldn't work on his Sabbath, the state's highest court ruled yesterday.
The Supreme Judicial Court, upholding a ruling by a Suffolk Superior Court judge, said the MBTA failed to prove that it would be an "undue hardship" to get other drivers to swap shifts with David Marquez, a Seventh-day Adventist who could not work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
State antidiscrimination law "clearly contemplates that employers will help employees shuffle shifts to allow observance of their Sabbath," the court said in an opinion written by Justice Robert Cordy.
Both sides in the case agreed that Marquez was a qualified candidate. Things went smoothly at first when Marquez applied, but the MBTA notified him in early September 1997 that it could not grant his request not to work Friday nights and it thus could not offer him the job.
Marquez filed a discrimination complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. He won his case there and in Superior Court during a legal battle that lasted more than a decade.
Marquez was awarded $50,000 for emotional distress, $53,550 in attorney's fees, and the job, if he still wanted it.
"The decision has given us guidance on how to proceed in the future on any requests for religious accommodation and obviously we'll abide by the court's decision," said Daniel A. Grabauskas, T general manager.
Marquez, 43, of Somerville, said he now works for Massachusetts General Hospital as a security officer and doesn't want the MBTA job anymore.
Interviewed yesterday afternoon by cellphone as he drove home from work to begin observing the Sabbath, Marquez said, "I'm happy it's over with. It's a David and Goliath story. . . . You can't discriminate against anybody's religious faith, no matter what it is."
He said he looked forward to receiving the award in the case and that he planned to contribute 10 percent to his church.
