A Durham security company has agreed to pay $65,231 to a former employee after federal regulators determined the firm fired her for requesting time off to observe a Muslim religious holiday. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced the settlement with North Carolina Detective Agency, Inc., finding the company violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it terminated the woman in June 2025 after she failed to report for duty during the holiday.
According to the EEOC, the agency was aware of the employee's need for a religious accommodation but failed to conduct a good-faith interactive dialogue with her before letting her go, as reported by the Raleigh News & Observer. Federal civil rights law requires employers to engage employees in that kind of back-and-forth conversation once a religious accommodation request comes in, rather than simply denying it and moving to discipline. The commission found reasonable cause to believe the company denied the employee time off for the holiday and then fired her for the absence.
North Carolina Detective Agency, headquartered at 2102 Fay Street in Durham, offers 24/7 armed and non-armed security, patrol, and investigative services to businesses, hospitals, neighborhoods, and events across the Triangle, according to Discover Durham. The case was resolved through a voluntary conciliation agreement, an administrative process that let the company settle the EEOC's finding without a courtroom fight. As part of the deal, the agency will not have to admit liability for religious discrimination.
What the Settlement Requires
Beyond the $65,231 in back pay and compensatory damages, the agency must overhaul how it handles requests like the one that triggered this case. The company is required to train all employees, including supervisors, on equal employment opportunity rights, and it must draft written policies explicitly prohibiting religious discrimination.
The agreement also compels North Carolina Detective Agency to post a workplace notice informing staff of their equal employment opportunity rights and to establish clear procedures for handling future religious accommodation requests. EEOC officials framed the outcome in stark terms. “Religious freedom is a fundamental American right,” said Patricia Carrasco, per the commission. “No American should have to choose between practicing their faith and keeping their job.”
Legal Standard Has Tightened Since 2023
The case lands against the backdrop of a significantly stricter legal test for employers who want to deny religious accommodation requests. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Groff v. DeJoy, businesses must now prove that granting an accommodation would create a substantial increased cost relative to their overall operations, according to Jackson Lewis. That standard replaced a much weaker de minimis cost test that had let employers reject accommodation requests over minor inconveniences for decades.
The Raleigh Area Office handled the investigation under the EEOC's Charlotte District Office, which enforces federal workplace civil rights laws across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, including all 37 eastern North Carolina counties that contain Durham. That district office fields more than 5,000 discrimination charges annually, with religious, race, disability, and retaliation claims making up the bulk of its caseload, per Ward and Smith, P.A. Only a small fraction of those charges result in a formal reasonable cause finding like the one issued against North Carolina Detective Agency.
Part of a Broader Enforcement Push
The Durham settlement fits into a marked national escalation in religious discrimination enforcement. The EEOC filed 16 religious discrimination lawsuits and recovered more than $63 million for religious workers since January 2025, according to Gen Re. That enforcement wave has increasingly targeted scheduling conflicts and outright denials of religious leave.
Employment discrimination has become the single most frequently reported category of civil rights complaints filed by American Muslims nationwide, accounting for more than 15% of all cases logged in both 2024 and 2025, per the Council on American-Islamic Relations' California chapter. The advocacy group has tracked record levels of anti-Muslim discrimination complaints over the past three years, with workplace disputes forming the primary source of those grievances.
This is not North Carolina Detective Agency's only recent brush with federal court. A separate lawsuit filed by a former security officer alleging disability-related harassment was dismissed without prejudice by a U.S. District Court judge in August 2025, according to court records reviewed by Justia Law. The Durham case also follows a similar Triangle-area enforcement action from December 2024, when the EEOC sued UNC Rex Healthcare in neighboring Wake County over its handling of employee religious exemption requests, as Hoodline previously reported.
