In a unanimous decision in Groff v. Dejoy, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified Title VII’s undue hardship standard to mean that an employer that denies a religious accommodation must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business, not the long-standing “de minimus” standard used for nearly 50 years since the Court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison.
The facts of the case center around a USPS worker, Gerald Groff, whose religious beliefs prohibited him from working on Sundays. USPS redistributed Groff’s Sunday deliveries to other staff, but Groff received progressive discipline for failing to work on Sundays, and he eventually resigned. Groff sued USPS for violating Title VII by failing to reasonably accommodate his religious beliefs, asserting that USPS could have accommodated his Sunday Sabbath practice without undue hardship on the conduct of USPS’s business. The District Court granted summary judgment to USPS and Third Circuit affirmed based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Hardison, which it construed to mean “that requiring an employer ‘to bear more than a de minimus cost’ to provide a religious accommodation is an undue hardship.”
The Supreme Court reversed the lower courts’ decisions and held that showing more than a de minimus cost does not suffice to establish “undue hardship” under Title VII. The Court further stated that an employer who fails to provide an accommodation has a defense only if the hardship is “undue,” and a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered “undue.” Specific to the case at hand, the Court determined that it would not be enough for an employer to conclude that forcing other employees to work overtime would constitute an undue hardship. Consideration of other options, such as voluntary shift swapping, would also be necessary.
Of note, the Court’s decision leaves in place Title VII’s protections for seniority-based bidding systems. Specifically, the Court held “Title VII does not require an employer and a union who have agreed on a seniority system to deprive senior employees of their seniority rights in order to accommodate a junior employee’s religious practice.”
It is critical that when denying an employee’s religious accommodation request, school districts are prepared to show they are not just relying on the impact to other employees but are prepared to show that the cost of accommodating the request, as well as the impact on other employees, would be substantial on the conduct of the business.