In a unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court of the United States has limited the ability of employers to invoke the "undue hardship" defense in response to claims by employees who are denied religious accommodations. Clarifying the application of decades-old precedent long interpreted to sustain the defense upon a showing of "more than a de minimis cost," the Court held that an employer must instead show that the burden of granting an accommodation would "result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The Supreme Court reversed a Third Circuit ruling that Gerald Groff, a postal worker who observed the Sabbath as part of his religious beliefs, was not legally entitled to be excused from work on Sundays as an accommodation of those beliefs. Groff, who had been scheduled for Sunday work as a result of an arrangement between the U.S. Postal Service and the Amazon company, first transferred to a location not affected by the Amazon arrangement to avoid Sunday work obligations. Then, when that location also began delivering for Amazon, Groff was disciplined for not reporting to work on Sundays when another employee could not cover for him. Eventually, he resigned.
Title VII protects employees from discrimination based on their sincerely held religious beliefs and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for those beliefs. The Third Circuit had determined that granting Groff his requested accommodation would have created more than a de minimis cost for the U.S. Postal Service because it "imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale." Therefore, under what had for many years been the prevailing interpretation of the Supreme Court's 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, allowing Groff not to work on Sundays would have placed an undue hardship on the U.S. Postal Service.
The Supreme Court held that the longstanding interpretation of Hardison as requiring employers only to meet a "more than de minimis cost" test was in fact a misinterpretation, based on an isolated sentence from the opinion that related to only one narrow aspect of the decision's broader analysis. Examining the text of Title VII, the background of Hardison and the sentence's context, the Supreme Court determined that Hardison actually recognized a higher standard for establishing undue hardship, one that required a showing of "substantial" burdens for the employer's business.
In reinterpreting Hardison, the Supreme Court noted in particular that mere imposition on co-workers, without some associated business detriment, is not enough standing alone to meet the "substantial increased costs" burden. For example, co-workers' animosity toward the religion at issue would not suffice to meet the now-clarified standard. Similarly, the Court said, relying solely on co-workers' dissatisfaction with having to work overtime does not meet the standard. In some instances, however, impact on co-workers may be part of the relevant analysis, provided it has an actual effect on the employer's business.
Ultimately, the Groff decision leaves many questions open. The Supreme Court expressly labeled its newly clarified standard "context-specific" and has left lower courts with the task of applying its ruling to particular sets of facts.
Following Hardison, the EEOC had issued regulations and other guidance suggesting that, despite the generally accepted "more than de minimis" standard, the burden on employers may actually be higher than that, at least in some circumstances. In Groff, the Supreme Court noted that much of that guidance probably will be unaffected by its holding, but it declined to adopt wholesale the EEOC's construction of Hardison, potentially raising further questions for employers about how Hardison applies in practice.
What is clear, however, is that it now will be far more difficult for employers to defend claims of wrongfully denied religious accommodations by seeking to establish an undue hardship. With the law significantly more favorable to employees on this issue as a result of Groff, an uptick in such failure-to-accommodate claims is a virtual certainty. Employers should review with counsel their policies and practices regarding the issues the Supreme Court addressed in Groff.
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