Religious Discrimination Statistics for California, 2026

Religious discrimination claims come in two forms: unequal treatment because of belief, and failure to accommodate a religious practice such as dress, grooming, prayer or schedule. The accommodation duty is where most modern cases live, and it is what produced the fiscal 2022 spike in the table below.

California religion charges by year

The fiscal 2022 figure is the vaccine year. California workers filed 1,550 religion charges, more than eight times the 184 of the year before, nearly all over employer vaccine mandates and denied exemptions. The EEOC notes the same effect nationally, where religion charges went from 2,111 to 13,814. By fiscal 2025 California was back to 312, still above the pre pandemic level of around 175.

A note on how to read the EEOC figures. The EEOC counts a charge under every basis it alleges, so a single charge that claims sex discrimination and retaliation shows up in both columns and the columns add up to more than the total. The state figures cover charges filed with the EEOC itself, not the tens of thousands of complaints California workers file with the state Civil Rights Department, which we cover separately.

State complaints

The state tables show the same wave a year later, because CRD counts by calendar year and had three year deadlines: religious creed right to sue complaints were 2,509 in 2022, 3,304 in 2023 and 1,998 in 2024.

A note on how to read the CRD figures. The Civil Rights Department publishes its numbers by calendar year, and it counts a complaint under every basis it lists, so the basis rows add up to more than the number of complaints. Most California workers who go to court first ask CRD for an immediate right to sue notice rather than an investigation, so the right to sue table is the closer measure of how many people are actually pursuing a claim.

Outcomes nationally

Nationally the EEOC resolved 4,124 religion based charges in fiscal 2025. 341 settled, 187 were withdrawn with benefits, 406 ended in a reasonable cause finding, 2,406 in a no cause finding and 784 were closed administratively. Merit resolutions totaled 934, 22.6 percent of resolutions, and the agency obtained 46.8 million dollars for charging parties without litigation.

In 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court raised the bar for employers who refuse a religious accommodation, requiring them to show a substantial increased cost rather than a minimal one. California law already required a real undue hardship. Expect merit rates on accommodation claims to rise as cases filed under the new standard resolve.

What these numbers mean if it happened to you

• Religious creed in California includes belief, observance, practice, dress and grooming, and it protects sincerely held beliefs whether or not they belong to an organized religion.
• An employer must accommodate unless it can show a real undue hardship, and California lists segregating you from customers or the public as not an acceptable accommodation.
• Retaliation for asking is a separate basis in the state tables.
• Harassment because of religion, including mocking, is a harassment claim with the same rules as any other.

Sources

The figures on this page were taken from the following publications, as released by the agencies. Percentages, changes, sums and rates per 100,000 workers are our own arithmetic from those figures.

• EEOC, Table E1b, charge receipts by state and basis, FY 2009 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E4f, religion based charge receipts and resolutions, FY 1997 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E1a, charge receipts by basis or statute, FY 1997 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2024 Annual Report (complaint tables and county appendix), calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2023 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2022 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov

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