Groff v. DeJoy SCOTUS Preview

 Here is the SCOTUSblog preview by Kalvis Golde:

In the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Congress strengthened the religious protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by requiring employers to accommodate all aspects of their employees’ religious beliefs and practices, unless doing so would impose “undue hardship” on the business. Five years later, the court stated in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison that an employer suffers undue hardship if accommodating an employee’s religion would require “more than a de minimis cost.” This week, we highlight cert petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, whether to revisit Hardison’s more-than-de-minimis-cost test.

Gerald Groff worked as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania. An Evangelical Christian, Groff observes a Sunday Sabbath. When USPS signed an agreement with Amazon in 2013 to deliver packages on Sundays and holidays, Groff was initially able to avoid working Sundays by picking up extra shifts during the week – and eventually transferring to another post office. But as demand for deliveries increased, the accommodations wore thin. Groff soon received multiple disciplinary actions for refusing to work on Sundays.

Facing termination, Groff chose to resign, and sued USPS in federal court for refusing to accommodate his religious beliefs and practices under Title VII. The trial court ruled for the Postal Service under Hardison, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit affirmed. Exempting Groff from work on Sundays imposed a more than de minimis cost on USPS, the appeals court held, because it forced his coworkers to pick up more than their share of Sunday shifts – at the expense of their own religious observance or family time – and weakened workplace morale at the post office.

In Groff v. DeJoy, Groff asks the justices to dispose of Hardison’s more-than-de-minimis-cost test. Inconvenience to coworkers does not qualify as a business cost to USPS, Groff reasons. But even if it does, he argues, an undue hardship means a significant burden, while his inability to work on Sundays imposes only a minor hurdle. Other petitions have asked the court to jettison Hardison’s test in recent years, and although the court has yet to take up the issue, at least three justices have indicated their interest in doing so.