11:38 a.m. - FARGO, N.D. (AP) -- Jurors who declined to compensate a Fargo letter carrier for alleged harassment at work were not convinced the woman was mocked because of her sex or religious beliefs, the jury's foreman said.

Instead, jurors concluded Bonnie Jensen was harassed by co-workers because they disliked her. That did not qualify Jensen for the $800,000 in damages she was seeking in her federal lawsuit, jurors concluded.

"We all felt that she had been harassed, but not based on sex or religion," said Dale DeKrey of Fargo, the jury's foreman. "We really struggled with that, but it just doesn't meet that standard."

Said another juror, Rhonda Kutz of Jamestown: "I don't believe they harassed her because they hated her religion. They just disliked Bonnie."

The five-man, three-woman jury deliberated the case for about four hours over two days last week before declining to award Jensen damages on Friday.

Kutz said she and two other jurors held out, trying to figure how a federal law that bans religious and gender-based harassment at the workplace could apply to Jensen.

"I totally think that Bonnie Jensen was harassed," Kutz said. "But the instructions we had, we just could not say she was harassed because of her religion. We couldn't get around that."

Jensen, a letter carrier at Fargo's Prairiewood post office, said co-workers ridiculed her for taking time off for volunteer work at Fargo's Bethel Evangelical Free Church. She said she was regularly shown pornography, and taunted with sacrilegious remarks.

"If it weren't for my religious beliefs, it wouldn't have happened," Jensen said. "To come up with the verdict they did just doesn't make sense."

Shon Hastings, an assistant U.S. attorney who defended the Postal Service, said jurors were careful in applying the law.

"An occasional gender-related joke isn't prohibited by (federal law)," Hastings said. "It doesn't stop people from teasing each other, or shunning each other."

Jensen worked for the Postal Service for about 20 years, before leaving in November 1999.