Religious Favoritism? SCOTUS Backs Christian's Fight for Religious Rights

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Several religious groups in the United States are celebrating after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian who sued his former employer for alleged religious discrimination after forcing him to work on Sundays, which was against his religious beliefs.

In Groff v. DeJoy, the conservative-majority Supreme Court unanimously sided with Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier from Pennsylvania and a devout evangelical Christian. He was hired by the United States Postal Service (USPS) to work evening, weekend, and holiday shifts. However, he refused to work Sunday shifts, citing his belief that Sundays should be considered rest days.

While the USPS management initially accommodated his religious beliefs in their four-person post office, he was later required to work Sunday shifts after a co-worker was injured and a replacement couldn’t be found. Groff refused and completely skipped those Sunday shifts, forcing other co-workers to cover for him. Groff was later disciplined, resigned, and sued USPS for refusing to provide “reasonable accommodations” for his Christian beliefs.

The new ruling clarified that employers must do more than the bare minimum to accommodate the religious beliefs of their employees, in contrast to Trans World Airlines v. Hardison in 1997, where the Supreme Court previously ruled that employers only need to suffer minimal hardship to deny their employee’s requests for religious observance, which became known as the controversial “de minimus” standard.

Although Groff v. DeJoy did not wholly overturn Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court made an important clarification that for employers to deny their employee’s requests to observe their religious beliefs, whether to treat Sunday as a rest day for Christians or shave facial hair for Sikhs and Muslims, the burden for doing so must be substantial for the business.

“We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the ruling.

He also said that the courts "should resolve whether a hardship would be substantial in the context of an employer's business in the commonsense manner that it would use in applying any such test.”

While the ruling was a significant win for Christians, other religious groups like Jews, Sikhs, and Muslims also celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision because they believe it will help strengthen protections for religious workers. Different religious groups, such as the Orthodox Union, said that the court’s decision will “help many people, from many different faith communities across the U.S.,” and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the ruling “marks a new era.”

But not everyone was pleased with the court’s decision, which had been increasingly siding with religious groups and individuals in recent cases such as 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which stated that a web designer cannot be forced to create work that will violate her deeply-held religious beliefs.

The American Atheists said that giving Groff a religious exemption in work is unconstitutional and that the ruling would shift more work burdens into atheists, humanists, and other non-religious Americans.

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