Labor and Employment LawDiscrimination
April 9, 2026A Michigan federal jury delivered a powerful verdict in favor of Sudoos Hamood, a Muslim-American single mother and English instructor who lost her job after refusing to remove her veil while teaching virtual classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hamood worked for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) since 2016 and offered three reasonable accommodations when her employer demanded she teach on camera with her face uncovered. ACCESS rejected every option and fired her for insubordination in October 2021. After a trial before Judge Linda V. Parker, the jury found ACCESS failed to reasonably accommodate Hamood's sincere religious beliefs and rejected the nonprofit's claim that doing so would have caused undue hardship. Jurors awarded $1.8 million in damages, later reduced to $605,471 after the Court applied Title VII's statutory cap based on ACCESS's employee count of more than 500 workers.



