The Human Rights Act Protects Creed and Religion Without Defining Either, Writes No Duty to Accommodate Religious Practice, and Never Mentions Immigration Status

Two words, seven times each, defined nowhere

Minn. Stat. § 363A.08, subd. 2, the employer prohibition:

Except when based on a bona fide occupational qualification, it is an unfair employment practice for an employer, because of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, familial status, membership or activity in a local commission, disability, sexual orientation, or age to:

(1) refuse to hire or to maintain a system of employment which unreasonably excludes a person seeking employment; or

(2) discharge an employee; or

(3) discriminate against a person with respect to hiring, tenure, compensation, terms, upgrading, conditions, facilities, or privileges of employment.

Creed and religion are listed as two separate grounds, and the same pairing runs through the rest of the section: subdivision 1 for labor organizations, subdivision 3 for employment agencies, the three clauses of subdivision 4 on pre-employment inquiries, and subdivision 8(d) on wage-discrimination claims. A case-insensitive search of § 363A.08 as the Revisor publishes it returns “creed” seven times and “religion” seven times.

Neither word is defined. Reading the chapter’s definitions section, Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, straight through from subdivision 1 to subdivision 50, the defined terms include “disability,” “employer,” “employee,” “familial status,” “marital status,” “national origin,” “race,” “sex,” “sexual harassment,” “sexual orientation,” “status with regard to public assistance,” and “gender identity” — and neither “creed” nor “religion” is among them. The one religion-adjacent definition is subdivision 40, “religious or denominational educational institution,” which exists to identify entities for the chapter’s exemptions rather than to describe a protected characteristic.

The accommodation question, answered by reading the section

Section 363A.08 has eight subdivisions. Read through, the string “accommodat” appears in it fourteen times, and all fourteen sit in two places: once in subdivision 5, which extends subdivision 6’s duty to pregnancy, and thirteen times in subdivision 6 itself. Subdivisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 contain it not at all.

Subdivision 6(a) says who the duty runs to. It is an unfair employment practice for an employer above the subdivision’s headcount threshold “not to provide a reasonable accommodation for a job applicant or qualified employee with a disability unless the employer, agency, or organization can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.” Subdivision 5 is written for employees “affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or disabilities related to pregnancy or childbirth,” and it reaches accommodation by cross-reference — “including a duty to make reasonable accommodations as provided by subdivision 6.”

There is no third category. The employment section of the Minnesota Human Rights Act imposes no duty to accommodate religious observance or practice, and this page does not fill that silence. (The same search run across the whole of chapter 363A, and the conclusion that every accommodation duty in the chapter is written for disability, is on the accommodation page.)

The federal duty exists, and its shape is unusual: it is not a duty clause at all but a definition. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(j):

The term “religion” includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.

Because it is a definition, it works by folding the accommodation question into the word “religion” wherever Title VII uses it — including in § 2000e-2(a), which makes it unlawful for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” And because it is federal, it carries the federal employer threshold: “fifteen or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.” § 2000e(b).

What Minnesota does have on religion at work

Three provisions, none of them an accommodation duty.

The inquiry ban. Minn. Stat. § 363A.08, subd. 4(a), makes it an unfair employment practice, before a person is employed or admitted to a labor organization, to “(1) require or request the person to furnish information that pertains to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, familial status, disability, sexual orientation, or age”; to “(2) seek and obtain for purposes of making a job decision, information from any source that pertains to” the same list; or to “(3) cause to be printed or published a notice or advertisement that relates to employment or membership and discloses a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on” the same list. The prohibition reaches asking, and it reaches asking someone else. Paragraph (b) makes the person asked “an aggrieved party.” What an employer may ask about and check after an offer is on background checks and pay transparency.

Captive-audience meetings. Minn. Stat. § 181.531, subd. 1, prohibits an employer from penalizing an employee “because the employee declines to attend or participate in an employer-sponsored meeting or declines to receive or listen to communications from the employer … if the meeting or communication is to communicate the opinion of the employer about religious or political matters,” and subdivision 5 defines “religious matters” as “matters relating to religious belief, affiliation, and practice and the decision to join or support any religious organization or association.” Subdivision 2 gives the employee a direct civil action with a 90-day window. The full treatment is on captive audience meetings.

Public contracts. Minn. Stat. § 181.59 requires every contract for materials, supplies, or construction let by the state or a local unit of government to contain provisions by which the contractor agrees that “in the hiring of common or skilled labor for the performance of any work under any contract, or any subcontract, no contractor, material supplier, or vendor, shall, by reason of race, creed, or color, discriminate against the person or persons who are citizens of the United States or resident aliens who are qualified and available to perform the work to which the employment relates,” and that “a violation of this section is a misdemeanor.” The section is from 1941 and its enforcement runs through contract cancellation and forfeiture rather than a private claim.

The exemptions, and the one that quietly grew in 2024

The Revisor prints a note at § 363A.08: “Any statutory exemptions to this section are covered under sections 363A.20 and 363A.26.” Two of those exemptions are about religion, and both were amended by Laws 2024, ch. 105.

The fraternal-organization exemption. Minn. Stat. § 363A.20, subd. 2, now reads: “The provisions of section 363A.08 shall not apply to a fraternal corporation, association, or society, with respect to qualifications based on religion, when religion is a bona fide occupational qualification for employment.” Laws 2024, ch. 105, § 11, narrowed it in two ways at once. It struck the words “religious or” before “fraternal,” so the exemption no longer names religious corporations separately; and it removed “sexual orientation” from the subdivision entirely, striking “or sexual orientation” in the first place and “or sexual orientation shall be” in the second, where “is” was inserted. The exemption is now about religion as a bona fide occupational qualification and nothing else.

The religious-association exemption. Minn. Stat. § 363A.26 is the broader one, and Laws 2024, ch. 105, § 12, rewrote it. Reading the act’s strike-and-insert markup, the section did three separate things:

Inserted a constitutional clause. The exemption now applies “consistent with the protections or privileges of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 16, of the Minnesota Constitution, including ministerial exceptions provided therein.”

Struck a limitation from clause (2). Before the amendment, clause (2) permitted a covered religious entity, “in matters relating to sexual orientation,” to take “any action with respect to education, employment, housing and real property, or use of facilities.” The quoted phrase came out. Clause (2) now permits “taking any action with respect to education, employment, housing and real property, or use of facilities,” full stop — a clause that formerly reached one subject now reaches all of them.

Moved and widened the secular-business limit. The sentence excluding “secular business activities … the conduct of which is unrelated to the religious and educational purposes for which it is organized” used to sit inside clause (2) and applied only to that clause. Chapter 105 struck it from there and added it, as new language, at the end of the section, where it now reads on the whole section and expressly reaches an “institution organized for educational purposes” as well.

The section as it now stands:

Nothing in this chapter prohibits any religious association, religious corporation, or religious society that is not organized for private profit, or any institution organized for educational purposes that is operated, supervised, or controlled by a religious association, religious corporation, or religious society that is not organized for private profit, consistent with the protections or privileges of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 16, of the Minnesota Constitution, including ministerial exceptions provided therein, from:

(1) limiting admission to or giving preference to persons of the same religion or denomination;

(2) taking any action with respect to education, employment, housing and real property, or use of facilities; or

(3) taking any action with respect to the provision of goods, services, facilities, or accommodations directly related to the solemnization or celebration of a civil marriage that is in violation of its religious beliefs.

This section shall not apply to secular business activities engaged in by the religious association, religious corporation, religious society, or any institution organized for educational purposes that is operated, supervised, or controlled by a religious association, religious corporation, or religious society that is not organized for private profit, the conduct of which is unrelated to the religious and educational purposes for which it is organized.

Chapter 105 carries no effective-date clause and makes no appropriation, so under Minn. Stat. § 645.02 it took effect on August 1 next following final enactment. The governor signed it on May 15, 2024, so both amendments took effect August 1, 2024.

The federal counterparts are separate and differently drawn. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1(a) provides that Title VII “shall not apply to an employer with respect to the employment of aliens outside any State, or to a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society with respect to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities.” And 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(e) supplies the religion bona fide occupational qualification and a separate provision for a school “owned, supported, controlled, or managed by a particular religion.”

National origin: Minnesota defines it and Title VII does not

Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 25, in full:

“National origin” means the place of birth of an individual or of any of the individual’s lineal ancestors.

Two things follow from that text. The definition reaches ancestry, not only the employee’s own birthplace — “or of any of the individual’s lineal ancestors.” And it is written in terms of place of birth, which is not the same idea as citizenship, immigration status, accent, or language.

Title VII lists national origin as a protected characteristic in § 2000e-2(a) but supplies no definition of it. Section 2000e, the definitions section, defines “religion” at subsection (j) and “because of sex” at subsection (k); “national origin” is not a defined term there.

The one national-origin-specific exception in chapter 363A sits inside the inquiry ban. Under § 363A.08, subd. 4(a)(1), the prohibition on requiring or requesting protected-characteristic information does not apply “unless for the sole and exclusive purpose of national security, information pertaining to national origin is required by the United States, this state or a political subdivision or agency of the United States or this state, or for the sole and exclusive purpose of compliance with the Public Contracts Act or any rule, regulation, or laws of the United States or of this state requiring the information or examination.” Both branches are drafted as “sole and exclusive purpose” conditions.

Immigration status: what the Minnesota statutes say, and what they do not

A case-insensitive search of chapter 363A as the Revisor publishes it returns zero occurrences of “immigration,” zero of “immigrant,” zero of “citizenship,” and zero of “alien.” None of the fourteen grounds in § 363A.08, subd. 2, is citizenship or immigration status. That is a report of the words searched and of the list read, and it is the whole of what this page says about chapter 363A on the subject.

The same search of chapter 181 returns two provisions, and both are narrow by design.

Nursing home workers. Minn. Stat. § 181.216, paragraph (b), makes it unlawful for an employer to:

(1) inform another employer that a nursing home worker or former nursing home worker has engaged in activities protected under sections 181.211 to 181.217; or

(2) report or threaten to report the actual or suspected citizenship or immigration status of a nursing home worker, former nursing home worker, or family member of a nursing home worker to a federal, state, or local agency for exercising or attempting to exercise any right protected under sections 181.211 to 181.217.

Paragraph (c) supplies the remedy: a person found to have experienced retaliation in violation of the section “shall be entitled to back pay and reinstatement to the person’s previous position, wages, benefits, hours, and other conditions of employment.”

Earned sick and safe time. Minn. Stat. § 181.9447, subd. 6(c):

It shall be unlawful for an employer or any other person to report or threaten to report the actual or suspected citizenship or immigration status of a person or their family member to a federal, state, or local agency for exercising or attempting to exercise any right protected under sections 181.9445 to 181.9448.

Read what these two provisions are and are not. Each is an anti-retaliation rule attached to one statutory scheme — nursing home employment standards in the first, earned sick and safe time in the second — and each is triggered by the exercise of a right under that scheme. Neither makes immigration status a protected characteristic, and neither reaches a hiring or firing decision that has nothing to do with the rights those sections create. The sick-time scheme is on earned sick and safe time.

The federal statute is the general one. 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(1) makes it “an unfair immigration-related employment practice for a person or other entity to discriminate against any individual (other than an unauthorized alien …) with respect to the hiring, or recruitment or referral for a fee, of the individual for employment or the discharging of the individual from employment — (A) because of such individual’s national origin, or (B) in the case of a protected individual (as defined in paragraph (3)), because of such individual’s citizenship status.”

Five features of that statute decide whether it is available.

• It stops at three employees. § 1324b(a)(2)(A) exempts “a person or other entity that employs three or fewer employees.”
• It does not overlap with Title VII on national origin. § 1324b(a)(2)(B) excludes national-origin discrimination “if the discrimination with respect to that person or entity and that individual is covered under section 703 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” and § 1324b(b)(2) bars filing the same national-origin facts with both the Special Counsel and the EEOC.
• “Protected individual” is a defined and limited term. § 1324b(a)(3) covers a citizen or national of the United States and certain lawfully admitted, refugee, and asylee categories, with exclusions tied to naturalization timing.
• It permits a citizenship preference between equally qualified people. § 1324b(a)(4): it is not an unfair immigration-related employment practice “to prefer to hire, recruit, or refer an individual who is a citizen or national of the United States over another individual who is an alien if the two individuals are equally qualified.”
• It covers document abuse and retaliation. § 1324b(a)(6) treats a request “for more or different documents than are required” under the employment-verification statute, or a refusal “to honor documents tendered that on their face reasonably appear to be genuine,” as an unfair immigration-related employment practice when done with discriminatory intent. § 1324b(a)(5) prohibits intimidation, threats, coercion, and retaliation.

The window is short. § 1324b(d)(3): “No complaint may be filed respecting any unfair immigration-related employment practice occurring more than 180 days prior to the date of the filing of the charge with the Special Counsel.” Charges go to the Special Counsel appointed under § 1324b(c), and § 1324b(b)(1) requires them to be “in writing under oath or affirmation.” Every employment deadline this site tracks is in the deadline table and the deadline calculator.

Currency

The Revisor currently publishes the 2025 edition of Minnesota Statutes. History lines were read on each section cited: § 363A.03 ends “2023 c 3 s 1; 2023 c 52 art 19 s 46-48; 2024 c 105 s 2-5”; § 363A.08 ends “1Sp2021 c 11 art 3 s 13; 2023 c 52 art 19 s 52-56”; § 363A.20 ends “2004 c 206 s 52; 2024 c 105 s 11”; § 363A.26 ends “2013 c 74 s 1; 2024 c 105 s 12”; § 181.59 shows “1941 c 238; 1973 c 123 art 5 s 7; 1984 c 609 s 11.”

The Revisor’s table of Minnesota Statutes affected by session laws was queried one exact section at a time. Section 363A.08 lags the posted edition in one place. Table 2 returns a 2026 Regular Session action — subdivision 4, amended by Laws 2026, ch. 88, art. 1, § 196 — that the 2025 edition does not yet show. Reading that section’s markup, the amendment reaches paragraph (b) of subdivision 4 only: it strikes “sections 363A.06, subdivision 4, and” and inserts “section,” so paragraph (b) will read that an individual required to provide prohibited information “is an aggrieved party under section 363A.28, subdivisions 1 to 9.” Paragraph (a), which is what this page quotes, is untouched by that act. Sections 363A.03, 363A.20, 363A.26, and 181.59 return no 2025 or 2026 action. Section 181.216 shows one record, its creation by Laws 2023, ch. 53, art. 3, § 8; § 181.9447 shows no action on subdivision 6 after its creation.

The federal sections were retrieved from the Legal Information Institute on September 11, 2026.

What this page does not do

It reads statutes and reports what is in them and what is not. It does not decide whether a particular request at work is a religious accommodation request, whether a particular employer is a religious association within § 363A.26, or whether a particular document demand was made with the intent § 1324b(a)(6) requires.

This page also cites no Minnesota appellate decision construing “creed,” “religion,” or “national origin” under chapter 363A. That is not a statement that none exists — the case-law search that would support such a statement was not run for this page, and the manifest records why.

The prohibition these grounds sit in, and how a claim under it is proved, are on how a discrimination case is proven. Harassment because of creed, religion, or national origin has been inside the definition of “discriminate” since August 1, 2024 — see the 2024 amendment. The one-year filing period is on the calendar page, and the choice between the state and federal agency is on filing with the EEOC and the MDHR.