JTA — Apple has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that the company failed to accommodate a Jewish employee’s observance of Shabbat and later fired him after he complained of religious discrimination.

The lawsuit, which was filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2025, accused Apple of discriminating against Tyler Steele, a longtime employee of one of its stores in Reston, Virginia.

Steele converted to Judaism in the spring of 2023, and while his manager initially approved his request not to be scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays due to his observance of Shabbat, another manager who replaced the previous one later rescinded the accommodation.

According to the complaint, Steele’s new manager, Anthony Dosch, denied his requests to have the days off in September 2023, allegedly telling him that month that he “could become a rules Nazi with regards to our policies.”

Days after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, Dosch also warned Steele not to get into politics or debates about the conflict at work, and a month later issued him a misconduct warning claiming that Steele had body odor that violated the store’s........

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