The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that employers can only deny an employee’s request for a religious accommodation under federal law if they can prove it would result in substantial increased costs for the business.
In a unanimous decision on June 29 in Groff v. DeJoy, the court rejected a longstanding interpretation of high court precedent asking employers to show only that the accommodation would cause them to “bear more than a de minimis cost.”
The Justices clarified that employers must prove “the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” The court sent the case back to lower courts for further review under the clarified standard.
In this case, a Christian postal worker, Gerald Groff, sued the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for failing to accommodate his request to not work on Sundays. The USPS does not deliver mail on Sundays, but it does have a contract to deliver packages for Amazon that includes Sundays.
The opinion stated that “A good deal of the EEOC’s [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s] guidance in this area is sensible and will, likely, be unaffected by the Court’s clarifying decision. But it would not be prudent to ratify in toto (as a whole) a body of EEOC interpretation that has not had the benefit of the clarification the Court adopts today.”
This article will be updated throughout the day with more news.