SCOTUS Increases Burden on Employers to Deny Religious Accommodations
On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court (“Court”) issued a unanimous opinion in Groff v. DeJoy, finding that the employer-friendly de minimis standard for determining whether an employer would suffer an undue hardship by granting a religious accommodation to an employee is incompatible with the text of Title VII, and that federal law requires employers to instead show that such an accommodation would impose “substantial additional costs” on the employer.
After the United States Postal Service (“USPS”) began delivering packages for Amazon on Sundays in 2013, Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier with the USPS, requested a religious accommodation, claiming that according to his Evangelical Christian faith, Sundays were to be devoted to worship and rest, and that delivering packages on Sundays would violate his religious convictions. The USPS, however, continued to schedule him for Sunday shifts and, when he continued to refuse to work on Sundays, the USPS redistributed those shifts to other USPS staff and issued Groff progressive discipline for his refusals to work. Eventually, Groff resigned his position and sued the USPS, claiming that it could have accommodated his religious practice without an undue hardship on the conduct of its business.
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