On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its highly anticipated (from our perspective) decision in the Groff v. DeJoy case. As we predicted a few months ago, the Court significantly revised a nearly 50-year old standard used to evaluate religious-based workplace accommodation requests.
Religious accommodation requests can take many forms, such as employees seeking schedule changes to accommodate time off for weekly religious services or religious holidays; more frequent or longer breaks for mid-day prayer; or exemptions from dress codes or grooming policies. After employers across the country decided to implement mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies, we saw many employees requesting exemptions from those policies based on their religion. Under the more employee-friendly standard announced in Groff, employers will have a more difficult time denying employees’ religious accommodation requests and may have to modify their policies and practices accordingly.
Before turning to the Court’s June 29, 2023 decision, a brief summary of the facts of Groff is warranted. Gerald Groff was hired to work as a postal carrier in 2012. At that time, postal carriers did not work on Sundays. In 2013, however, the United States Postal Service (USPS) signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays. Groff was an evangelical Christian and requested not to work on Sundays as a religious accommodation. For a time, the USPS was able to accommodate his request, but ultimately required all employees, including Groff, to work on Sundays on a rotating basis. When Groff refused to work on Sundays, he was disciplined. Eventually, he resigned and sued his employer for failing to reasonably accommodate his religious practices in violation of Title VII. Groff lost at both the district and appellate courts, and thereafter appealed to the Supreme Court.
Title VII provides that an employer must provide a reasonable accommodation to an employee whose religious beliefs, observances or practices conflict with a work rule or assignment, unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” on the business. But what is an “undue hardship” in that context? This was the big question before the Supreme Court in Groff. From 1977 until the recent Groff decision, courts interpreted “undue hardship” under Title VII as having more than a de minimis cost or burden on the employer. The de minimis standard is a relatively low standard. Indeed, it is lower than the “significant difficulty or expense” showing required of an employer to lawfully deny an accommodation request under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In Groff, the Court essentially split the difference between those two standards.
The Court discarded the de minimis standard in religious accommodations situations. Instead, to establish that a religious accommodation would be an “undue hardship,” an employer must show that the accommodation would result in “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” The Court further explained that all relevant factors must be considered in this analysis, including “the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in light of the nature, size, and operating cost of the employer.” In addition, employers must consider other possible accommodations – not just the requested accommodation – to try to identify whether one exists that would not pose an undue hardship on the business.
In short, requests for religious accommodations need to be evaluated applying the new heightened standard described in Groff, which might mean that accommodations that may have been denied before Groff may need to be accommodated now and into the future. Employers also need to realize that bias or hostility to a religious practice or accommodation can never serve as the justification for finding undue hardship. To that end, Human Resources and supervisors should be made aware immediately of the new heightened standard and the need to evaluate religious accommodation requests on a case-by-case basis.
Moving forward, employers should look out for expected guidance on this heightened undue hardship standard from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is the federal agency that enforces Title VII. At this time, it is unclear how the Groff decision will impact religious accommodations under state and local anti-discrimination laws. Many states and localities look to cases under Title VII and guidance from the EEOC when applying their own separate anti-discrimination laws, but they are not necessarily bound by Title VII case law or guidance. For those reasons, employers should monitor developments at the state and local levels, too.