Supreme Court rules for ex-mail carrier refusing to work on Sabbath

Businesses that don’t want to accommodate religiously observant employees’ needs must show they would incur a “substantial” cost if they were to do so, the Supreme Court said in a Thursday ruling delivering a narrow victory for religious advocates.

The justices, in a unanimous ruling, updated a 1970s-era precedent that let some employers easily reject religion-based requests such as time off on the Sabbath. The court said that was too low of a bar, and businesses must show they’d be forced to take excessive steps in order to refuse a religious-based claim.

“’Undue hardship’ is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court. “Those costs would have to rise to the level of hardship, and adding the modifier ’undue’ means that the requisite burden, privation or adversity must rise to an ’excessive’ or ’unjustifiable’ level.”

The court did not overrule the 1977 precedent, which gives businesses some room to navigate as they ponder religious accommodation requests.

In the 1977 case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the court said TWA would have had to go too far out of its way to work out shifts for an airline worker who wanted to be off on Saturdays for religious reasons.

Justice Alito said lower courts have read the 1977 ruling as stating that anything more than de minimis, or minor, costs to an employer constituted an “undue hardship” on the business.

He said that was a misreading of the earlier decision and has led to troubling results such as with Muslim women losing job opportunities because of their religiously mandated attire.

“We hold that showing ’more than a de minimis cost,’ as that phrase is used in common parlance, does not suffice,” wrote Justice Alito.

The case before the court involved Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country, who was pressured to work Sundays after the Postal Service took a delivery contract with Amazon. Mr. Groff asked not to be scheduled on those days for religious reasons, but the post office said it couldn’t always find substitutes.

Mr. Groff was punished for missing work and eventually left the job and sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on religion, among other classifications.

Lower courts said the Postal Service was protected under the Hardison precedent.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said employees at the small location where Mr. Groff worked would have to bear too much burden to accommodate him.

The high court’s ruling Thursday reverses the 3rd Circuit’s decision and lays out a more concrete standard for employers to meet, said Kelly Shackelford, CEO of First Liberty Institute, which represented the postal carrier.

Employees often request to respect their holy days, have prayer breaks, or dress in a way that honors their faith.

“No American should be forced to choose between their faith and their job,” Mr. Shackelford said. “The court’s decision today restores religious freedom to every American in the workplace. This decision will positively help millions and millions of Americans — those who work now and their children and grandchildren.”

Mr. Groff’s case was sent back to the lower courts for evaluation in light of the new hardship standard the court laid out.

“I am grateful to have had my case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and that they have decided to uphold religious liberty. I hope this decision allows others to be able to maintain their convictions without living in fear of losing their jobs because of what they believe,” Mr. Groff said.

Speaking to The Washington Times, the man whose 1977 case led to Thursday’s ruling, former Trans World Airlines employee Larry Hardison, called the 9-0 decision “a big step in the right direction for the liberties that we have been given by our Constitution.”

“I think it’s going to help tens of thousands of Sabbatarians, be they Saturday keepers like I am, and the Jewish population, or even Christians that are Sunday keepers,” Mr. Hardison said. “There have been a lot of amicus briefs filed by Muslims and [people] in other faiths that have also run across this stumbling block.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the main ruling, wrote a separate opinion to make clear the 1977 precedent wasn’t overturned.

“Petitioner Gerald Groff asks this court to overrule Hardison and to replace it with a ’significant difficulty or expense’ standard. The court does not do so. That is a wise choice,” she wrote, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Congress is free to revise this court’s statutory interpretations.”