Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “due to…faith.” The U.S. Supreme Court docket lately agreed to listen to a case that asks whether or not that regulation requires the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to accommodate a spiritual postal worker who refuses to work on Sundays.
The case is Groff v. DeJoy. Gerald Groff is a former mail provider who give up the USPS after being disciplined for refusing to work on Sundays. He argues that he was entitled to a spiritual lodging below each Title VII and the Equal Employment Alternative Act of 1972, which amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act by defining “faith” as together with “all facets of non secular observance and apply, in addition to perception, except an employer demonstrates that he’s unable to fairly accommodate to an worker’s or potential worker’s non secular observance or apply with out undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s enterprise.”
It was no “undue hardship,” Groff and his legal professionals preserve, for the USPS to have accommodated Groff’s Sunday Sabbath observances. “The 1972 modification to Title VII aimed to make sure that no employee should make the merciless alternative of surrendering their religion or their job,” they instructed the Court docket. “On its face, the statute offers sturdy protections for non secular workers—in any case, ‘undue hardship’ means that an employer should incur important prices or problem earlier than it’s excused from providing an lodging.”
Groff misplaced final yr earlier than the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the third Circuit, which held that granting him a office non secular lodging would have imposed an undue hardship on the USPS. Groff’s refusal to work on Sundays, the appellate court docket stated, “created a ‘tense ambiance'” as different employees “needed to work extra Sundays to cowl Groff’s absences,” which itself created “resentment in the direction of administration.” The court docket additional acknowledged: “Groff’s absence additionally required the opposite carriers to ship extra mail than they in any other case would have on Sundays.”
The third Circuit based mostly its resolution in important half on Trans World Airways v. Hardison (1977), by which the Supreme Court docket stated that requiring an employer “to bear greater than a de minimis value” to make a spiritual lodging “is an undue hardship.” Spiritual activists, together with social conservatives, preserve that Hardison unduly favors employers over employees. Groff and his legal professionals argue that the Court docket “ought to revisit and disapprove Hardison‘s definition of undue hardship.”
A minimum of three members of the present Supreme Court docket appear able to facet with Groff and toss Hardison by the wayside. In 2020, the Court docket declined to listen to the same case about non secular lodging at work. Writing in concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, agreed that the Court docket was proper to disregard that one however, “in an applicable case,” the Court docket ought to “think about whether or not Hardison‘s interpretation ought to be overruled.” Based on Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, “Hardison‘s studying doesn’t characterize the most certainly interpretation of the statutory time period ‘undue hardship.'”
Assuming these three justices can appeal to no less than two extra votes, which I believe they most likely can, Hardison appears prefer it might be scrapped in favor of a statutory interpretation that expands the scope of federally required non secular lodging at work.
