The Supreme Court has handed a big win to religious liberty advocates by siding with a Christian former mail carrier who didn't want to work on Sundays. In a unanimous decision, the court revisited a 1977 ruling that said employers are not required to make religious accommodations if they put more than a "de minimis"—minimal—cost on the business. Attorneys for Gerald Groff, the former mailman, argued that the precedent made it too easy for employers to reject requests, and too difficult to bring claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, USA Today reports. Title VII bans workplace discrimination based on religion, among other factors, and says religious accommodations can only be rejected when an "undue hardship" would be imposed on the employer.
Groff, a former missionary, took a job as a fill-in mail carrier in Pennsylvania's Amish Country partly because he didn't want to work on the Sabbath and the Postal Service didn't make deliveries on Sundays. But that changed in 2015 under an Amazon.com contract with the Postal Service, the AP reports. Groff was initially exempted from working Sundays but he later faced disciplinary measures. In 2019, fearing he could be fired any day, he resigned and sued under the Civil Rights Act. Groups representing various Christian denominations filed briefs supporting Groff, as did groups representing Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, NBC reports. The American Postal Workers Union warned that siding with Groff would disadvantage other workers who didn't share his faith.
The Supreme Court's decision, which sends Groff's case back to lower courts for another look, is likely to have an impact on many workplaces. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that instead of "de minimis" being the standard, employers must "show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
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When arguments in the case were heard in April, the New York Times reported that a ruling in favor of Groff "may be less contentious than some of the court's recent rulings on religion." The Times noted that the 1977 case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, was before the court at a time "when religious liberty was largely a liberal cause." The Times describes the two dissenting justices in 1977, Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice William J. Brennan Jr., as "liberal lions." "All Americans will be a little poorer until today's decision is erased," Marshall wrote in his dissent. (More US Supreme Court stories.)
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