There are millions of people who need to have to SAME day off every week. These include the minority of Christians with commitments to fulfil leading roles in the Sunday activities of their churches that others in the same churches don’t have. But they also include non-resident parents who have court contact orders to pick up their children from their ex-partners the same time every week. They include children with disabled and elderly parents whom they take shopping once a week. They include wives who want their days off to be the same as their husbands, or who need to have time off when their husbands are working, or when their children receive weekly chemotherapy. And so on.

Trying to make a religious rights case out if this straightforward case of an employer’s broken promise, has been the ruin of Ms Mba. Barrister Paul Diamond is to blame.

This has nothing to do with ‘expressing’ religious beliefs. This sounds like an orphanage and she took a job providing care to children. Do children not need care on Sundays? If so then the employees should work on Sundays. Religious freedom is not a right to demand that your religion never inconvenience you. If you absolutely believe you should not work on Sundays, then you are going to be a disadvantage in the job market to those who are ok with working on Sundays. A person who is seriously religious will not only have some conditions they have to place on their work but will have to exclude entire careers from their lives.