Is Wokeness a Religion?

At Newsweek Vivek Ramaswamy presents what appears to me to be a creative and novel argument that businesses may face risks for terminating employees because they don’t meet up to “woke” standards:

It’s well established that an employer violates Title VII if it fires an employee because of his religious beliefs. But was Ms. Carano expressing religious beliefs through her social media post? Very unlikely. Nor was Mr. McNeil when he uttered the racial slur, nor was Mr. Cafferty, who said nothing at all. But that’s not the end of the matter.

Often forgotten is that Title VII protects not only religious employees from being fired for their beliefs, but equally protects nonreligious employees from being fired for refusing to endorse an employer-mandated religion. “What matters in this context is not so much what [the employee’s] own religious beliefs were,” the Seventh Circuit federal court of appeals said in the 1997 Venters v. City of Delphi. What matters is whether the employee was “fired because he did not share or follow his employer’s religious beliefs.”

The real question, then, is whether wokeness in America today qualifies as a religion under Title VII. If it does, Ms. Carano has a straightforward claim of religious discrimination—she was fired for refusing to follow an employer-mandated religion.

Surprising as it may seem, the answer to that legal question is almost certainly yes. The Supreme Court’s definition of religion used to require a belief in God, but the Court abandoned that position 60 years ago in Torcaso v. Watkins. Today, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—which administers Title VII—employs a much more expansive definition: “A belief is ‘religious’ for Title VII purposes if it is…a ‘sincere and meaningful’ belief that ‘occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by…God.'” “Religious beliefs include . . . non-theistic ‘moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views.'”

The risk then arises from “wokeness” being a comprehensive and closely-held system of beliefs about “fundamental or ultimate matters”.

Don’t dismiss this as inconsequential. People are losing their livelihoods, including people who are not celebrities or in the public spotlight, in some cases for doing quite innocent things as Mr. Ramaswamy highlights in his article.

Is Trumpism equally a religion? I know of no one who’s lost his or her job by failing to conform to Trumpist tenets. Maybe someone can produce an example.