June 30, 2023
Rembolt Ludtke Employment & Labor Law Practice Group
Mark Fahleson, Tara Paulson, Julie Ward, Sam Colwell
On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court released its much-anticipated decision in Groff v. DeJoy (Case No 22-174), a case that presented the high court with the first opportunity in almost 50 years to revisit the issue of the appropriate standard for evaluating employee religious accommodation requests.
The result? A unanimous Supreme Court declined to overturn its 1977 decision that set an extremely low bar for employers to show that a religious accommodation request was unduly burdensome and therefore not legally required. However, the Court “clarified” its standard to state that an “‘undue hardship’ is shown when a burden is substantial inthe overall context of an employer’s business.” Given the absence of a bright-line test, and because the Court declined to shed light on factual scenarios that would and wouldn’t meet the new test, additional religious accommodation litigation is an anticipated in the short run until courts can provide context to the new heightened standard.
Recall that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. As originally enacted, Title VII did not define what was meant by discrimination “because of. . . religion.” After some regulatory back-and-forth, in 1968 the federal EEOC published regulations that obligated employers "to make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees "whenever that would not work an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.” As a result of the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison ,most courts interpreted “undue hardship” to mean any effort or cost that is “more than . . . de minimis,” i.e., a fairly low threshold for employers to meet.
Plaintiff Gerald Groff’s case was fairly run-of-the-mill. An evangelical Christian whose Sabbath is on Sunday, Groff worked for the United States Postal Service as a carrier. When he took the job, it generally did not involve Sunday work. But that soon changed after USPS contracted to provide deliveries for Amazon, including on Sundays. When scheduled to work on a Sunday, Groff would decline and USPS would usually redistribute his work to other employees. Groff received progressive discipline for refusing to work on Sundays and eventually quit and brought suit alleging religious discrimination. The lower courts all sided with USPS, concluding that the Hardison de minimum standard for undue hardship was "not a difficult threshold to pass” because exempting Groff from Sunday work had "imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale.” Stated another way, because the burden on USPS was more than de minimis, the employer didn’t need to accommodate Groff’s request to not work on Sundays.
The Supreme Court reversed those decisions and sent the case back to the trial court for further consideration using the Court’s new standard: “‘undue hardship” is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.”
Old Standard for Evaluating Religious Accommodation Requests (Hardison 1977): Employers must make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees whenever that would not work an “undue hardship” which meant any effort or cost that is “more than . . . de minimis,” i.e., a fairly low threshold for employers to meet. This standard is no longer applicable.
New Standard for Evaluating Religious Accommodation Requests (Groff 2023): Employers must make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees whenever that would not work an “undue hardship” which now means the employer must show that it “would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” i.e., a higher, fact-specific threshold. It appears the impacts on other employees may be relevant, but coworker animosity should not be considered.
Existing Standard for Evaluating Disability Accommodation Requests under the ADA: The Supreme Court declined to simply adopt the ADA’s “undue hardship” test for purposes of Title VII religious claims. The ADA standard remains in place for disability claims—a requested accommodation need not be granted if it would create an “undue hardship,” which means it would cause “significant difficulty or expense” based on an individualized assessment of current circumstances and employer resources. Nevertheless, the individualized assessment is instructive and should be used in religious accommodation cases as well.
The Rembolt Ludtke Employment & Labor Law Practice Group is available to assist employers with the implementation of this decision, including drafting policies to comply with the new decision, effective training for supervisors and human resource professionals in evaluating accommodation requests and advice for dealing with specific accommodation scenarios.
This article is provided for general information purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Those requiring legal advice are encouraged to consult with their attorney.
