Today marks an important occasion for the Supreme Court, as they not only made a historic ruling on affirmative action in university admissions but also delivered a significant decision concerning religious liberties.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gerald Groff, a Christian mail carrier from Pennsylvania. Despite Groff’s request to have Sundays off for religious reasons to attend church, the United States Postal Service (USPS) mandated that he deliver packages, particularly from Amazon, on Sundays.
This ruling carries substantial weight as it sets a precedent for how religious accommodations should be respected in the workplace. It will have a lasting impact on numerous Christians who seek to uphold their religious observances while balancing their professional responsibilities.
Fox News reported the historic ruling:
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously for a postal worker in Pennsylvania in an important religious liberty dispute, over how far employers should go to accommodate faith-based requests in the workplace.
Gerald Groff, a Christian mail carrier, from Pennsylvania, asked the court to decide if U.S. Postal Service could require him to deliver Amazon packages on Sundays, which he observes as the Sabbath. His attorney, Aaron Streett, argued in April that the court should revisit a 50-year-old precedent that established a test to determine when employers should make accommodations for their employees’ religious practices.
In ruling for the government worker, the high court overturned its 1977 precedent that said employers had to “reasonably accommodate” an employee’s religious beliefs and practices, so long as it did not create an “undue hardship” on the business.
The new decision tightens the “undue hardship” standard, and could make it easier for some individual employees to secure a religious accommodation in the workplace.)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. A Supreme Court case from 1977, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, said employers could deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business.
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To work on Sunday, which Mr. Groff regards as the Shabbat day, would thus violate his religious faith. As Fox News noted Groff’s lawyer’s argument in court back in April was that “the court should revisit a 50-year-old precedent that established a test to determine when employers should make accommodations for their employees’ religious practices.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 established that companies had to “reasonably accommodate” the religious beliefs and practices of their employees as long as such beliefs and practices did not create “undue hardship” for businesses. A precedent case from 1977 by the Supreme Court established that religious accommodation could be denied if businesses could establish that doing so would impose “more than a de minimis cost.”
Groff’s attorney argued that religious accommodations should be strictly interpreted according to Title VII and that the de minimis standard should be scrapped. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Groff’s lawyer’s arguments that the de minimis standard did not stand up. As liberal Justice Sotomayor in her concurrence joined by Justice Jackson observed, “both parties here agree, the phrase “more than a de minimis cost”…was loose language.”
Justice Alito, writing for the formal opinion of the Court, stated that “We hold that showing “more than a de minimis cost,” as that phrase is used in common parlance, does not suffice to establish “undue hardship” under Title VII… As we have explained, we do not write on a blank slate in determining what an employer must prove to defend a denial of a religious accommodation, but we think it reasonable to begin with Title VII’s text.”
Voices within the legal community have greeted the news with joy and have observed the potential application of this judgment to other similar cases. One such voice was Robert Barnes, a constitutional lawyer, who noted “Big decision today by [the Supreme Court] unanimously agreeing that employers cannot discriminate against religious employees unless it would be a “substantial” cost to accommodate them. This makes it much easier to win the lawsuits against vaccine mandates, and help those fired b/c of them.”
