A Utah woman reached a “favorable settlement” in her religious discrimination case against her former employer, Bath & Body Works, her attorneys announced Tuesday.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jocelyn Boden, a former Bath & Body Works store manager in Layton, Utah, said her constitutional right to religious freedom was violated when she was fired for refusing to use the pronouns of a transgender employee she hired.
Boden was represented by First Liberty Institute and Schaerr Jaffe LLP, who argued that Bath & Body Works failed to uphold her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Cliff Martin, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, told the Deseret News that the legal advocacy group is “fielding a lot of complaints by employees that say they are being bullied based on a pronoun policy.”
If an “employer brings a pronoun policy to their door and enforces it in a way they’re not comfortable with” because of religious convictions, Martin said, “they do have the right to request a religious accommodation, and employers must provide that accommodation unless there is an undue hardship.”
What caused Boden’s termination?
Boden’s complaint centered on her religion’s teaching that, “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose” as stated in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, a declaration by church leadership that Boden believed in and had on display in her home.
In a letter to Andrea Lucas, the chair of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Boden said that in April 2025, she had her first shift with the transgender employee and referred to the employee as “she” despite the employee identifying as a boy.
“I believe that using pronouns out of line with this understanding of gender is dishonest. My convictions do not allow me to lie by affirming a reality I believe is false. Therefore, I cannot refer to a female using male pronouns,” Boden said, but noted that her intent was not to discriminate.
When asked if she would be willing to refer to the transgender person by their chosen name, Boden said she would. Even still, she said she was “chastised and alienated” by fellow employees.
Despite “offering an accommodation, the company immediately fired her without any preliminary warning and violated its policy on progressive discipline,” per the complaint.
The filing also points out that her district manager, who handed Boden her termination notice, was also a member of the same faith, which Martin said helped Boden’s case.
“The fact that the district manager was of the same faith should have put her even more on notice that there were religious beliefs at play here, not just preferences,” he said.
In her letter to Lucas, Boden described herself as “devout” to her faith and argued that Bath & Body Works “perpetuated an atmosphere of hostility against me and my moral and religious beliefs.”