He flagged the conflict early. What HR did next is now in federal court
A deacon says ExxonMobil punished his faith. The paper trail is now in federal court.
A Catholic deacon says ExxonMobil moved him to shift work that wrecked his church duties, then suspended him after his lawyer called.
Max Silva spent more than eight years as a day-shift trainer at ExxonMobil's Baytown complex. By his account, he reached what the complaint calls the company's highest training level, taught supervisors, and was scheduled to train staff in England and to develop training for a joint venture in Saudi Arabia. He was also pursuing a second calling. After a six-year program, he was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church on February 15, 2025.
The trouble, his complaint says, started the next month.
In March 2025, Silva began hearing he might be sent back to the refinery and to rotating shift work - days, nights, and weekends. That schedule, he says, would have made his church duties impossible. A deacon, the filing notes, serves at Mass and tends to parishioners in the evenings and on weekends.
What happened next is the part HR leaders will want to read closely.
Silva says he flagged the conflict early. He emailed Human Resources on April 23, 2025, noting that his day shift did not yet require an accommodation but that he wanted the company to know. On May 8, 2025, the filing says, he learned he would return to a shift-work role, and he told the Baytown Area HR manager the move would interfere with his religious practice. The HR manager emailed a denial on May 11, 2025, according to the complaint.
The rationale, as Silva tells it, was thin. He alleges the company's answer amounted to an "if we do it for you we have to do it for everyone" response - with no explanation, he says, of why the accommodation would be an undue burden, and no account of why his specialized skills were suddenly dispensable after nearly a decade.
Then came the suspension.
Silva's lawyer wrote the company on May 23, 2025, the complaint says. Days later, on June 2, 2025, Silva alleges, three employees came to his training office and walked him out of the building. According to the filing, one of them told Silva he was being placed on "crisis suspension," for "insubordination," and for making "lots of threats." He says he was sent for drug testing and suspended pending an investigation. Silva alleges he had never threatened anyone, that the drug test came back negative, and that he was back at work ten days later, on June 12, 2025, this time reporting to the refinery.
The complaint goes further, taking aim at how the company runs its HR function. It alleges an "insular and secretive" assignment process, claims HR staff "are not trained to advise" leadership, and says they "consistently fail to prevent" discriminatory and retaliation-based actions. On training, the filing alleges leaders receive "nothing more than a video from time to time," with a box to check.
For HR professionals, the throughline is familiar and instructive. An employee raises a religious conflict. The response, as alleged, is a blanket fairness line rather than an individualized undue-hardship review. An adverse action follows shortly after a lawyer's letter arrives. Each of those moments is where an accommodation file is won or lost.
Silva brings claims for religious discrimination, failure to accommodate, and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act. He is asking for damages, an injunction, and other relief.
The allegations have not been tested in court. ExxonMobil has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled. The account here is drawn from Silva's complaint.
