The U.S. Supreme Court has made it easier for employees to seek religious accommodations. The ruling came as a result of a case involving an evangelical Christian mail carrier who objected to working on Sundays.
The lawsuit was filed by Gerald Groff, a Pennsylvania resident and devout Christian, who maintained that the U.S. Postal Service could have honored his request to be excused from Sunday shifts, citing his religious conviction that it is a day meant for worship and rest.
The case will now be returned to lower courts for further legal proceedings.
Groff contended that employees faced excessive difficulty when pursuing religious claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination on various grounds, including religion.
In a unanimous decision authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the justices clarified a 1977 Supreme Court ruling known as Trans World Airlines v. Hardison. The court determined that employers are not obligated to provide accommodations if they would impose even a minimal or “de minimis” burden, using the preferred Latin term of the court.
This ruling aligns with the language of Title VII, which stipulates that an accommodation can only be rejected when it would cause an “undue hardship” for the employer. Groff, who worked as an auxiliary mailman in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area from 2012 to 2019, resigned from his position. As a noncareer employee, his responsibilities included filling in for other workers when they were unavailable, including weekends and holidays.
Initially, Groff was not required to work on Sundays. However, the situation changed in 2015 due to a new requirement for delivering Amazon packages on that day. In response to Groff’s accommodation request, his managers arranged for other postal workers to handle Sunday package deliveries until July 2018. After that, disciplinary actions were taken against Groff if he failed to report to work on Sundays.
