“Mark of the Beast” Does Not Leave Its Mark on the High Court

Yesterday the Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari in Yeager v. FirstEnergy Generation Corp., No. 14-1302 (cert. denied 10/5/2015), the case we previously brought to your attention in which an Ohio court found that an applicant’s refusal to provide a social security number because it would “cause him to have the ‘Mark of the Beast’ which his religion prohibits” was an insufficient allegation to maintain a claim of religious discrimination. Earlier this year, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the Ohio court’s decision that the employer’s refusal to hire him did not amount to religious discrimination. See Yeager v. FirstEnergy Generation Corp., 777 F.3d 362 (6th Cir. 2015). The Supreme Court’s refusal to grant certiorari allows employers to rest assured that insofar as an employee argues that their refusal to provide a social security number because of his or her fundamentalist Christian belief that the number is the “Mark of the Beast,” will not result in liablity in the Sixth Circuit for a claim of religious discrimination.