In one case, a postal worker says he can’t work on Sunday because his religion doesn’t let him.
An appeal from a former mail carrier in Pennsylvania who sued the US Postal Service for religious discrimination after being chastised for refusing to carry parcels on Sundays has been accepted by the US Supreme Court.
After lower courts rejected Gerald Groff’s argument that the Postal Service had broken the statute against discrimination by refusing to exempt him from working on Sundays, when the evangelical Christian keeps the Sabbath, the justices took up his case on Friday. The courts came to the conclusion that Groff’s requests were too hard on both his boss and his coworkers.
The case provides the 6-3 conservative majority of the court with another chance to support a plaintiff who has established a claim of anti-religious discrimination. The case will likely be decided by the end of June after being argued over for the next few months.
In Holtwood, Pennsylvania, Groff worked as a “rural carrier associate,” which required him to stand in for absent career carriers as needed. But Groff often didn’t show up for Sunday shifts that were part of the deal for the Postal Service to deliver Amazon.com packages.
Postal workers tried to help Groff by switching his Sunday shift with someone else’s, but this didn’t always work.
According to court documents, his absences led to dissatisfaction among other carriers who had to cover his shifts, which ultimately forced one to leave the Holtwood station and another to resign from the Postal Service completely. Groff resigned in 2019 after receiving many disciplinary letters for his attendance.
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The case examines whether businesses must provide employees with religious accommodations in order to abide by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination statute. Employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin is illegal.
Employers are required by law to provide reasonable accommodations for a worker’s religious observances or practises unless doing so would place an “undue hardship” on the company.
In the case Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, heard by the Supreme Court in 1977, it was decided that anything that cost more than a “de minimis” amount was “undue hardship.”
Over the past three years, the court has rejected instances of a similar nature, but in doing so, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have called into question the 1977 decision.
In a number of significant judgements over the past few years, the Supreme Court has likewise adopted an expansive perspective on religious liberties.
For instance, in a decision supporting increased public funding for religious organisations last year, the Supreme Court further weakened the separation of religion and state. In that instance, two Christian families contested a Maine tuition assistance programme that disallowed funding for private religious institutions.
In 2019, Groff filed a lawsuit against the USPS. The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which has its headquarters in Philadelphia, dismissed the complaint last year after concluding that Groff’s exclusion had put a strain on coworkers and hindered workflow, resulting in “undue hardship.”
Groff’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to look at the case so that the 1977 decision could be changed. That decision said that courts “almost always side with employers whenever an accommodation would cost something.”
A member of Groff’s legal team in the case is the First Liberty Institute, a conservative religious rights legal organisation.
SOURCE: REUTERS
