Topline
The Supreme Court opened the door to more employees being granted accommodations for their religion at work Thursday, throwing out a ruling against a former postal worker who wanted to take off Sundays for religious reasons and clarifying when workplaces can refuse to accommodate workers’ religion—though it didn’t overturn its precedent on the issue as the postal worker had asked the court to do.
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
Key Facts
The court ruled unanimously to throw out previous rulings against former postal worker Gerald Groff, who wanted to take off Sundays due to his religious beliefs and ultimately resigned from the U.S. Postal Service and sued the agency.
USPS management forced Groff to work on Sundays when he was scheduled when someone couldn’t be found to replace him—part of a deal with Amazon to deliver packages, as USPS doesn’t deliver mail on Sundays—and managers disciplined him when he did not, which Groff said violated his federal rights.
While federal law requires accommodations for employees’ religions unless they would impose “undue hardship” on the employer, previous Supreme Court precedent has found employers shouldn’t be required to “bear more than a de minimus cost” to accommodate a worker’s religion—which Groff’s lawsuit challenged, arguing he should have been granted accommodations and the court should change its precedent.
The Supreme Court threw out that “de minimus” standard and clarified when workers’ religions can’t be accommodated, saying workplaces must instead show that the accommodation would “result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business” based on previous Supreme Court precedent—but did not fully overturn its precedent, as Groff had wanted.
Employers must “reasonably accommodate” workers’ religions rather than just considering if it would be reasonable, the court ruled, meaning an employer couldn’t just conclude with a case like Groff’s that it would be too hard to make other employees work overtime without trying it or considering other options.
The court sent Groff’s case back to the lower court, which will now decide based on the new standard if the USPS acted unlawfully by requiring him to work on Sundays, and said its decision Thursday does not “foreclos[e] the possibility that USPS will prevail.”
Contra
The court said in its ruling that it believed its decision wouldn’t have a huge impact on how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulates workplace rights around religion, with Justice Samuel Alito writing justices believed the opinion “may prompt little, if any, change in the agency’s guidance” around workplace accommodations. “We have no reservations in saying that a good deal of the EEOC’s guidance in this area is sensible and will, in all likelihood, be unaffected by our clarifying decision today,” Alito wrote.
Key Background
Groff brought his case to the Supreme Court after a lower district court found the USPS had taken steps to accommodate his religion—like trying to swap his shifts with other employees—and so had followed federal law, and that exempting him from working on Sundays entirely would have been an undue hardship. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling, siding with USPS. Groff v. DeJoy is the latest in a series of religious liberty-based cases the court has taken up in recent years, including rulings last term that sided with a high school football coach who was punished for praying and ruled state funds should be allowed to be used on religious schools and the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case that ruled religious corporations do not have to provide coverage for contraception. The court also has another case this term, 303 Creative v. Elenis, that concerned whether a web designer could refuse to provide wedding websites for same-sex couples. The court has still yet to rule on that case.
Further Reading
Justices look for common ground in postal worker’s religious liberty case (SCOTUSblog)
Supreme Court probes religious accommodations in Christian postal worker case (NBC News)
Supreme Court Weighs Clash of Postal Worker’s Sabbath and Sunday Deliveries (New York Times)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/06/29/supreme-court-paves-way-for-more-religious-accommodations-at-work-with-postal-worker-ruling/