The Supreme Court’s Case Against Employers’ Clues to their Religious Views and Their Implications for the Christian Faith of the World
The case before the Supreme Court tests how far employers must go to accommodate their employees’ religious views.
Federal civil rights law requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs of workers as long as that accommodation does not impose an “undue hardship” on the employer’s business.
When someone is allowed to refuse work, the burden on others is significant, as suggested by Justice Elena Kagan. And Kavanaugh noted that other workers may wish to attend religious services on Sundays, too, though their religions may not require that they don’t work on Sunday.
“I believe in a literal keeping of the Lord’s Day,” Groff said. “It’s the entire day as a day of rest and … Spending time with other believers. But most of all, just to honor God and keep the day special unto him,” he says.
The Postal Service and the High Court: Why Do Postal Workers Can’t Work Sundays and Holidays? Critics of the Supreme Court’s 1978 Decision
The Postal Service established a process for scheduling employees to work on Sunday and holiday. The process first called for non-career employees like Groff to fill in the gaps. Then, volunteers willing to work Sundays and holidays would be called, and if none of this was sufficient to meet demand, the rural associate and assistant carriers would be assigned on a regular rotating basis.
The Postal Service believes that Groff’s lawyers are exaggerating the application of the court’s 1977 decision. Three years after the decision, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued more deferential rules to the religious views of employees.
Nearly a half-century ago, the Supreme Court defined an undue hardship as a substantial additional cost, but it also said that the cost need not be more than a de minimis amount, defined in the dictionary as a trifling amount.
That language has long angered religious groups of all kinds. The Supreme Court supermajority is being pressed to modify or overrule its previous ruling.
At the argument on Tuesday, JusticeSOttor said that at the small post office in Groff, others had to pick up the weight when he couldn’t work.
One employee left and another employee filed a grievance because of the treatment they received from Mr. Groff.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested that it wouldn’t cost the postal service that much money to pay an extra dollar an hour to hire someone else for those days. But Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the postal service, replied that under the union contract, premium wages are time-and-a-half.
The Case of the EEOC Against a Changing Sabbath Law: A Commentary of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Lawyers representing businesses say that morale must be bad enough to affect the efficiency of the business.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that all these questions seemed to her to focus on policy judgments made by Congress. She said Congress has refused to change its law to accommodate Sabbath observers like Groff, despite the precedent being on the books for a long time.
She was worried that if a person failed to get into Congress they could just go to the court and argue that they should have the right to change the statutory standard. “
Some of the other court conservatives were not convinced. Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, asked how the term “undue burden” could be squared with de minimis.
Solicitor General Prelogar conceded that the phrase “de minimis” in the 1977 decision was unfortunate, but she urged the court not to reverse the 46-year-old precedent, which she said has been interpreted for decades by the EEOC and the lower courts in a manner that “generously” accommodates the interests of religious employees.
At the end of the day, it was unclear whether a majority of the court was more worried about imposing a burden on businesses and other employees or whether the court’s conservatives would once again come down on the side of religious interests.