Supreme Court Raises Standard for Denying Religious Accommodation

In a unanimous decision, Groff v. Dejoy, the U.S. Supreme Court revived a former U.S. Postal Service mail carrier’s religious bias suit. In the process, the Court upended decades of lower court precedent regarding the proper analysis for determining whether a religious accommodation presents an undue hardship and must be provided under Title VII.

Previously, many lower courts interpreted a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court opinion as setting a relatively low bar for showing undue hardship for denying religious accommodation requests. Employers only had to show that a requested accommodation would cause a more than “de minimis,” or minimal, burden on the employer. Moving forward, employers must show that the burden of granting a religious accommodation would result in “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”

What is the case about?

Gerald Groff, an Evangelical Christian, worked for USPS as a mail carrier until his resignation in 2019. Groff objected to working on Sundays because he observed Sundays as the Sabbath in accordance with his religion. His job as a rural mail carrier, however, required him to take Sunday shifts on a rotating basis. To accommodate him, Groff’s supervisors offered to allow him to observe the Sabbath on a weekday, and they tried to cover his Sunday shifts when possible. On two dozen Sundays, USPS could not find someone to cover Groff’s shifts. He failed to appear for work, so he received progressive discipline. Eventually, he quit.

Groff sued under Title VII, alleging USPS unlawfully denied him religious accommodations to be relieved from Sunday work. The lower court granted summary judgment for USPS, holding that USPS carried its burden of showing that exempting Groff from Sunday work would create a more than de minimis burden by imposing additional work on his coworkers, disrupting the workplace and workflow, and diminishing employee morale. The Third Circuit affirmed. As explained below, the Supreme Court vacated the lower courts’ decisions and remanded the case to the district court.

The Supreme Court’s Analysis

In Groff, the Court declined the plaintiff’s proposition to adopt the stringent ADA standard for determining undue hardship, and it also rejected the defendant’s suggestion that the Court should apply the same language from the 1977 decision and the low de minimis burden that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) and lower courts had applied for years.

In the Supreme Court’s 1977 opinion in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Court said, “[t]o require [the employer] to bear more than a de minimis cost in order to give [the employee] Saturdays off is an undue hardship.” For decades, many lower courts understood this language to mean that employers may deny a requested accommodation if it would impose more than a de minimis burden on the employer.

In Groff, the Court did not explicitly overturn the Hardison decision, but it stated lower courts took this language out of context and stretched it too far. In Hardison, the requested accommodation would have required the employer to violate its seniority system. For the Groff Court, this was the distinguishing factor. The Court also reasoned that the Hardison opinion mentions “substantial costs” to the employer in providing an accommodation in other parts of the opinion.

Ultimately, the Court held that it is not enough for employers to show an accommodation would result in a more than minimal burden on the employer. Instead, employers must show that granting an accommodation would result in “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” In making this determination, courts (and employers) should consider “all relevant factors, including the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in the light of the nature, size, and operating cost of an employer.” The impact a requested accommodation may have on the employee’s coworkers is also relevant, but only to the extent it would affect the conduct of business.

The Court opined that the EEOC’s current guidance will be largely unaffected by this decision. While the EEOC adopted the “de minimis” test, it softened its impact by cautioning against extending the phrase to cover things like “administrative costs” of reworking schedules, the “infrequent” or temporary “payment of premium wages for a substitute,” and “voluntary substitutes and swaps” when they are not contrary to a “bona fide seniority system.” Still, the Court declined to adopt the EEOC’s current guidance in full.

Bottom Line

Employers should expect to conduct a more in-depth and stringent analysis in determining whether a requested religious accommodation would cause undue hardship. The impact to the business must be “substantial,” but undue hardship isn’t entirely hinged on financial cost to the business. Employers should consider all relevant factors, including the impact the requested accommodation will have on the employee’s coworkers and how that impact will affect business operations. For “close-call” situations, employers should seek the advice of an employment attorney.