The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled about religious accommodations in the workplace. To deny a requested accommodation, an employer must demonstrate that granting the accommodation would result in substantially increased costs concerning the conduct of its business.
“The Supreme Court reminded employers that religious employees must not be forced to choose between their employment and their convictions. While the language of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is clear—that the faith-based requests of religious employees must be honored unless the burden on an employer would be too great to bear—the plain text of that statute was long ignored," Sarah Parshall Perry, Heritage senior legal fellow, said in a recent statement.
In a significant ruling on religious accommodations in the workplace, the Supreme Court clarified the contours of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the case of Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, according to a June 29 Supreme Court syllabus of the case. The case centered around Gerald Groff, an Evangelical Christian and mail carrier for the United States Postal Service (USPS) who sought accommodation for his religious practice of observing Sundays as a day of worship and rest. Groff argued that USPS could have accommodated his Sunday Sabbath practice without causing undue hardship. But the District Court granted summary judgment to USPS, and the Third Circuit affirmed the decision based on the precedent set by Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, a case that had provided the Court's last interpretation of religious accommodation under Title VII.
The Hardison case, which was decided in 1977, involved a dispute between Larry Hardison and Trans World Airlines. Hardison had requested an accommodation for his Sabbath religious practice, but accommodating his request would have required other employees to work on his Sabbath. The Court found that Title VII did not require TWA or the union to deprive senior employees of their seniority rights to accommodate Hardison's religious practices. The Court recognized the special protection provided to bona fide seniority systems under Title VII and held that accommodating Hardison's request would violate the seniority rights of other employees.
The Supreme Court's ruling clarified that an employer must demonstrate that granting a religious accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its specific business, rather than just a de minimis cost. The Court emphasized that "undue hardship" under Title VII refers to burdens that are substantial within the overall context of an employer's business.
“After the Trans World Airlines v. Hardison decision, courts for too long ruled that an employer was under no obligation to accommodate a religious employee’s on-the-job requests if the impact on the operations of that employer was even trivial—a standard unsupported by the text of Title VII itself," Perry said in the statement.
The Court's opinion included a widely quoted sentence stating that requiring an employer to bear more than a de minimis cost to accommodate religious practices would be an undue hardship. But the Court also emphasized that the term "undue hardship" encompasses substantial costs and expenditures. It clarified that accommodations may be required even if they entail some costs.
The Supreme Court acknowledged that the previous interpretation of the Hardison case, which focused on the de minimis standard, may have led courts to overlook the actual text of Title VII in various situations. The Court highlighted the importance of assessing the impact of an accommodation on the employer's business and clarified that co-worker animosity toward religious practices or accommodations cannot be considered an undue hardship defense.
The Supreme Court's ruling provided guidance on the application of the undue hardship standard in religious accommodation cases. It left to the lower courts the responsibility to apply the clarified standard in a context-specific manner and to determine whether further factual development is necessary.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals was vacated, and the case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court's opinion.
“Thanks to the court’s unanimous decision, the scales of justice have now been level-set," Perry said in the statement. “Gerald Groff—and millions of American workers just like him—can be confident that their religious beliefs and practices must be accommodated by their employers to every extent possible."
