No more altar boy jokes

[Cobrabill]

or Fat Buddha jokes or Mohammed jokes.God,New Jersey is really a toilet.


N.J. justices add religion jokes to workplace ban
by Kate Coscarelli/The Star-Ledger
Friday August 01, 2008, 12:05 AM
Making jokes and comments about a person's religion can create a "humiliating and painful environment" and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, the state's highest court ruled Thursday.

The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone's faith -- even as a form of ribbing or "breaking of chops" -- cannot be tolerated in the workplace.


Clarifying anti-discrimination law, 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.

"It is necessary that our courts recognize that the religion-based harassing conduct that took place ... in this 'workplace culture' is as offensive as other forms of discriminatory, harassing conduct outlawed in this state," Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for a unanimous court.

The 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 -- claimed to be poor attempts at humor -- about his ethnicity and pasted stickers of the flags of Israel and modern Germany on his locker.

The 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.

Attorney Clifford Van Syoc, who represented the officer, said, "There is no reason to make fun of people's religion or race or anything."

Added Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New Jersey, "It sends a clear and unequivocal message that anti-Semitism has to be treated with the same degree of severity as racial harassment."

The attorney representing Haddonfield warned the decision would have a chilling effect. "The court has raised the bar on the hostile work environment -- now you can't even joke in the workplace," Mario Iavicoli said.

The case involved Haddonfield police officer Jason Cutler, who began working for the department in 1995. Jokes and comments were made about his ancestry a couple of times a month, including by the then-chief, who referred to him as "the Jew."

Cutler said the comments may have been intended as humor but he considered them belittling and anti-Semitic. He said he didn't complain out of fear of retaliation.

In April 1999, Cutler was about to watch a video on diplomatic immunity because the Maccabi Games, an annual competition of Jewish athletes in the United States, was being held nearby. Another officer allegedly blurted out a comment about "dirty Jews," and later claimed he said, "sturdy Jews." That officer apologized and said he thought it was just "stupid locker room humor." The officer was ordered to receive sensitivity training.

However, at a later, unrelated disciplinary hearing, the officer said what he really said was, "Let's get rid of all those dirty Jews."

LaVecchia wrote: "The reference to 'dirty Jews' and the further iteration of that comment to 'Let's get rid of all those dirty Jews, hearkened Cutler back to thoughts of one of the lowest times in mankind's history, the Holocaust. The comments demonstrated an anti-Semitic bigotry that has no place in a workplace in this state."