The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strengthened religious liberty in the workplace Thursday, ruling in favor of a Christian postal worker who lost his job for refusing to work on Sundays.<\/p>\n
The Court\u2019s unanimous opinion in\u00a0Groff v. DeJoy<\/i>, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, overruled the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the United States Postal Service (USPS) did not violate the religious accommodation rights of postal worker Gerald Groff under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision will give those religious minorities a fair shot in court and, one would hope, encourage more employers to adopt more inclusive workplace policies so that religious employees won\u2019t have to choose between their livelihood and their faith,\u201d Joshua McDaniel, director of Harvard Law School\u2019s Religious Liberty Clinic,\u00a0said<\/a>.<\/p>\n After clarifying Title VII\u2019s requirements, the Court gave the case back to the Third Circuit to retry the case because of its factual complexity. This means that either Groff or the USPS could eventually prevail, but the USPS \u2014 and all employers \u2014 must meet a much higher standard to deny a religious accommodation.<\/p>\n Groff, an Evangelical Christian and longtime employee of the USPS, never worked Sundays in line with his religious beliefs and his initial job description. But when the USPS started to deliver packages on Sundays because of a deal with Amazon, the postal service would require him to work on his Sabbath. To avoid conflict, he transferred to a different location.<\/p>\n His new location started delivering on Sundays, and he claimed that USPS \u201cprogressive[ly] discipline[d]\u201d him because he refused to work Sundays. He then resigned and sued the USPS for religious discrimination. The Third Circuit rejected his claim.<\/p>\n The controversy in this case surrounded a 50-year-old standard from\u00a0Trans World Airlines v. Hardison<\/i>. In that case, the Court held that an employer could deny an accommodation if it causes a \u201cmore than\u00a0de minimis<\/i>\u00a0cost\u201d \u2014 a legal term meaning that anything more than a \u201cvery small\u201d cost would be enough for an employer to legally deny any religious accommodation.<\/p>\n The Court held that Title VII\u2019s \u201cundue hardship\u201d language requires employers to show that the accommodation would impose a burden that \u201cis substantial in the overall context of an employer\u2019s business.\u201d Justice Alito stated that a business proving the accommodation would cause a small cost is not enough \u201cto establish \u2018undue hardship\u2019 under Title VII.\u201d This means that an employer now needs to show a substantial hardship would be caused by the religious accommodation in order to deny it.<\/p>\n His new location started delivering on Sundays, and he claimed that USPS \u201cprogressive[ly] discipline[d]\u201d him because he refused to work Sundays. He then resigned and sued the USPS for religious discrimination. The Third Circuit rejected his claim.<\/p>\n The controversy in this case surrounded a 50-year-old standard from\u00a0Trans World Airlines v. Hardison<\/i>. In that case, the Court held that an employer could deny an accommodation if it causes a \u201cmore than\u00a0de minimis<\/i>\u00a0cost\u201d \u2014 a legal term meaning that anything more than a \u201cvery small\u201d cost would be enough for an employer to legally deny any religious accommodation.<\/p>\n The Court held that Title VII\u2019s \u201cundue hardship\u201d language requires employers to show that the accommodation would impose a burden that \u201cis substantial in the overall context of an employer\u2019s business.\u201d Justice Alito stated that a business proving the accommodation would cause a small cost is not enough \u201cto establish \u2018undue hardship\u2019 under Title VII.\u201d This means that an employer now needs to show a substantial hardship would be caused by the religious accommodation in order to deny it.<\/p>\n Read more at: www.dailywire.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strengthened religious liberty in the workplace Thursday, ruling in favor of a Christian postal worker who lost his job for refusing to work on Sundays. The Court\u2019s unanimous opinion in\u00a0Groff v. DeJoy, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, overruled the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that … Continue reading SCOTUS Unanimously Strengthens Religious Liberty In The Workplace<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/watching-300x100-300x100-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-6kh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24322,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321\/revisions\/24322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}