Supreme Court hears case over religious accommodation

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument Tuesday over how far employers must go to accommodate religious employees. Former postal worker and Christian Gerald Groff has objected to being required to work Sundays to fulfill the U.S. Postal Service contract with Amazon. First, he transferred to a more rural Postal Service outpost that did not deliver on Sundays, but when the new outpost began delivering that day, he stopped showing up to shifts on Sundays. He quit and sued soon afterward, saying his employer was asking him to choose between his God-given conviction and their orders. On Tuesday, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether creating more protections would be fair for non-religious employees, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked about harms that are hard to quantify. 

What is the precedent? A federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires employers to accommodate religious practices unless they inflict “undue hardship” on them. But the Supreme Court in 1997’s Trans World Airlines v. Hardison ruled that employers may deny religious accommodations to employees if it imposes more than a negligible cost. Groff is asking the court to overturn the 1997 case. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have said the court should reconsider the case. 

Dig deeper: Read Randall Wenger’s column in WORLD Opinions that says Christians shouldn’t have to choose between their jobs and keeping the Sabbath.