Supreme Court Clarifies Undue Hardship In Religious Accommodation

In our June 2023 blog post, we suggested a review of your company’s accommodation polices for pregnant employees in light of passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). As PWFA went into effect, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was considering another discrimination case, this time concerning the religious beliefs and practices of employees and applicants.

In the case, Groff v. DeJoy, a USPS rural mail carrier who observes Sabbath on Sundays claimed religious discrimination by the Postal Service for rejecting his request to take off Sundays. (Groff’s position did not involve Sunday work until the USPS agreed to make Sunday deliveries for Amazon.) The Third U.S. Circuit Court sided with the USPS, which argued that giving Groff Sundays off would cause “undue hardship,” in part because of the burden put on other mail carriers and the office itself.

When SCOTUS agreed to hear arguments in the case, the Court appeared ready to change a precedent from 1977 that required reasonable accommodations for the religious practices of employees and applicants unless doing so would create an undue hardship, defined as more than a de minimis (minimal) burden, for the employer.

The meaning of undue hardship was at the center of the Court’s consideration of Groff. In its unanimous opinion, SCOTUS noted that the usual meaning of “hardship” is “something more severe than a mere burden.” The modifier “undue” meant that the burden must rise to an excessive or unjustifiable level, which is at odds with the ordinary meaning of de minimis. Thus, the Court stated, the interpretation used by lower courts for almost 50 years is not actually what the 1977 decision held. Rather, employers establish an undue hardship only by proving that a religious accommodation “would result in substantial increased costs for the employer’s business.” Further clarifying, the Groff opinion also suggested that religious accommodations that would interfere with items within a collective bargaining agreement might constitute an undue hardship not associated with a dollar value.

SCOTUS remanded the case back to the Third Circuit to apply the clarified standard in its decision to the facts of the case. We are monitoring developments in the case and will keep you posted.

For now, employers should take steps to ensure that policies comply with the clarified standards. The first step is to call your employment attorney to help you understand what policies need revision and ensure that your company has procedures in place to handle religious accommodation requests. Your attorney also knows the state and local laws which address religious discrimination. And an experienced employment lawyer will assist in documentation of all communications and decisions along the way. We are, as always, happy to help.