The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for a Christian mail carrier who refused to deliver Amazon packages on Sunday and argued that employers too easily turn down requests to accommodate religious practices.
Justice Samuel Alito, in the majority opinion, wrote that under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a business must show a "substantial" burden to deny such a request.
He wrote that an employer must show that burden "would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The case was ordered sent back to the lower courts for reconsideration. The decision was unanimous, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a concurring opinion that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.
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The conflict arose when the United States Postal Service, under a contract with Amazon, began requiring carriers to deliver packages on Sunday. The carrier, Gerald Groff, who worked in Amish Country in Pennsylvania, said he would not.
Lower courts ruled in favor of the Postal Service. It had argued that Sundays off for Groff resulted in extra work for other employees and worsened morale.
Groff countered that employers rejected requests like his too easily.
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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to accommodate religious practices unless it would be an “undue hardship.”
“Even if Title VII said only that an employer need not be made to suffer a “hardship,” an employer could not escape liability simply by showing that an accommodation would impose some sort of additional costs,” Alito wrote. “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.”
The court has been receptive to religious rights in the last few years. It ruled that a public high school football coach has a constitutional right to pray on the field after games and that a Catholic social services in Pennsylvania could refuse to consider same-sex couples wanting to care for foster children.
In the case that sets a precedent, Trans World Airlines V. Hardison, an “undue hardship” was any accommodation that caused more than a small expense.
Groff argued employers should have to show “significant difficulty or expense.”
Sotomayor noted that Groff had asked the court to “overrule Hardison and to replace it with a ‘significant difficulty or expense’ standard.”
The court did not, which she called a “wise choice.”
Sotomayor also wrote that Groff had asked the court to decide that Title VII required the Postal Service to show undue hardship to its business but not to his co-workers.
But the court recognized that Title VII requires undue hardship on “the conduct” of a business, she wrote.
“Because the ‘conduct of [a] business’ plainly includes the management and performance of the business’s employees, undue hardship on the conduct of a business may include undue hardship on the business’s employees,” she wrote.
Three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — had already said the court should reconsider Hardison.
As a fill-in carrier, Groff had been working toward getting his own route. He eventually left his job with the United States Postal Service over the Sunday shifts but said he hoped that the lawsuit would mean other people would not have to choose between their job and their religion.
