The U.S. Supreme Court handed religious employees a victory in a case that had pitted an evangelical mail carrier against the U.S. Postal Service. The nine justices unanimously tossed a misunderstanding of judicial precedent that had allowed USPS and other employers to avoid religious accommodations exceeding a faulty de minimis cost threshold.

Gerald Groff was a postal worker in Lancaster Counter, Pennsylvania, who held firmly to the belief that Sundays should be a day of rest and worship. This generally didn't present a problem at his job until USPS began making Sunday deliveries for Amazon. While initially finding ways with his supervisors to avoid Sunday work, USPS eventually changed its tune and began to require that Groff report to work despite his request for accommodation. Holding firm to his convictions, Groff was disciplined and ultimately resigned from his post in 2019.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act calls on employers like USPS to accommodate their employees' religious requests unless it would present an "undue hardship" on the organization. However, lower courts rebuffed Groff's challenges to USPS based on an understanding of a 1970s Supreme Court case in which a Trans World Airlines employee lost his plea for a Sabbath accommodation. Many judges latched on to a phrase in that ruling that seemed to suggest any accommodation's cost to an employer that was more than de minimis could qualify as a hardship too much to bear.

Writing for the unanimous court in this most recent USPS case, Justice Samuel Alito clarified that the de minimis standard was an incorrect understanding of case law. Instead, court precedent, not to mention the statute's language, required employers to show an undue hardship. He said that is "more severe" than a simple burden of new costs.

"Those costs would have to rise to the level of hardship, and adding the modifier' undue' means that the requisite burden, privation, or adversity must rise to an 'excessive' or 'unjustifiable' level," Alito declared.

The Groff ruling clarified that employers must pursue an accommodation for religious beliefs, not merely calculate the cost of one particular potential accommodation. Also, while an accommodation's impact on coworkers can be a relevant consideration in an assessment of hardship on an organization's operations — an idea Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized in a concurring opinion — the justices pointed out that coworker hostility "to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice" is not a permissible defense.

"If bias or hostility to a religious practice or a religious accommodation provided a defense to a reasonable accommodation claim, Title VII would be at war with itself," said Alito.

With this new understanding of what an "undue hardship" actually is, the justices sent the Groff case back down to lower courts for reconsideration, and many religious liberty advocates celebrated the important win.

"This is a landmark victory, not only for Gerald, but for every American," said Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty, which supported Groff in his suit. "No American should be forced to choose between their faith and their job."

ECFA welcomes this ruling honoring and bolstering religious freedom.