Apple has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit accusing the company of religious discrimination and retaliation against a longtime employee at its Reston, Virginia store, after he says managers denied him time off for the Sabbath and then fired him weeks after he complained. Tyler Steele, who had worked for Apple for 16 years, joining in 2007 as an Apple Genius technical support specialist, was terminated in January 2024. Apple has denied the allegations and did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
The lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2025, accused Apple of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through religious discrimination and retaliation, according to the Baltimore Jewish Times. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia's Alexandria Division under case number 1:25-cv-01637, with EEOC regional attorneys prosecuting the case against defense counsel from Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart, according to Westlaw Today. Apple and the EEOC unveiled the settlement in a federal court filing in Virginia on August 7, and the deal still awaits court approval.
A Scheduling Fight That Escalated Fast
According to the Baltimore Jewish Times, Steele converted to Judaism in 2023, and his manager at the time approved his request not to be scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays. But in September 2023, a manager identified in the suit as Anthony Dosch denied Steele's requests to have Fridays and Saturdays off. The following month, Dosch warned Steele not to discuss politics or debates about the Israel-Hamas conflict at work, the paper reports.
In November 2023, Dosch issued Steele a misconduct warning alleging he had violated store grooming policies related to body odor, per the same account. That same month, Steele complained to Apple officials about antisemitic behavior and the denial of his religious accommodation. The EEOC suit alleges the body-odor justification was a pretext used to mask religious discrimination and retaliation, as reported by AppleInsider.
Rescinded Accommodation, Then Termination
In January 2024, Steele reminded Dosch that he could not work the following Friday for religious reasons, according to the Baltimore Jewish Times. Dosch is quoted in the suit as saying he could become a “rules nazi” with regard to company policies. Steele's replacement manager then rescinded the Shabbat scheduling accommodation altogether, and Apple fired Steele from the store that same month.
Debra Lawrence, one of the EEOC attorneys on the case, said employees should not have to violate their religious beliefs to keep their jobs or fear retribution for requesting an accommodation. Her comment reflects the central legal theory behind the suit: that Apple's shifting justifications for Steele's termination masked a pattern of retaliation tied to his religious accommodation requests and his complaints about workplace conduct.
What Apple Must Pay And Change
Under the settlement's payment terms, Apple has 30 days to issue Steele's $80,000 back-pay portion as taxable W-2 wages without deducting employer-side FICA taxes, while the $70,000 compensatory-damages portion will be paid as a lump sum once Apple receives a completed W-9 form, according to 9to5Mac. The settlement also requires Apple to update its religious accommodation policies and conduct training for employees across its Virginia operations, with policy updates and trainings due within 90 days.
Those training requirements are specific: under the consent decree, Apple must provide at least 1.5 hours of Title VII compliance training to store management, HR teams, and employees responsible for evaluating religious accommodations across its Northern Virginia retail operations, per HR Dive. Because Apple settled through a consent decree without admitting wrongdoing, questions remain about exactly what internal communications took place among managers at the Reston store, but the structured settlement still binds Apple to policy overhauls and management retraining across the region.
Part Of A Bigger Legal Shift
The case arrives amid a legal landscape reshaped by the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 2023 ruling in Groff v. DeJoy, which held that Title VII requires employers to show a religious accommodation would cause “substantial increased costs” before they can deny it, replacing the lower 1977 “de minimis cost” standard, according to Ogletree Deakins. That ruling significantly raised the bar for employers trying to justify denying Sabbath accommodations, making scheduling policies like the one at the center of Steele's case more vulnerable to challenge.
The suit also fits a broader enforcement push at the federal level. In fiscal year 2025, the EEOC filed 11 religious discrimination lawsuits nationwide, its highest annual total of religious bias filings in nearly a decade, amid an explicit agency campaign centered on religious liberty, according to Seyfarth Shaw. Retaliation claims, meanwhile, have remained the single most common basis for EEOC charges nationwide for 17 consecutive years through fiscal year 2024, accounting for 47.8 percent of all filings the agency received that year.
