On Thursday, June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Groff v. DeJoy, unanimously decided to clarify the standard under which employers must evaluate religious accommodation requests. In doing so, the Court made it significantly more difficult for employers to reject such requests.

As we previously reported, this case was brought by Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian and former employee of the United States Postal Service (“USPS”). Groff had requested a religious accommodation from delivering packages for Amazon on Sundays, a day that he believed was reserved for worship and rest. Due to his refusal to deliver on Sundays, Groff was subject to “progressive discipline,” ultimately leading to his resignation in 2019. Groff sued the USPS under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for religious discrimination and for failure to accommodate his religious beliefs. Under Title VII, employers must provide reasonable accommodations when requested for religious reasons, so long as the accommodations do not impose an “undue burden” on the employer. The District Court, in a decision affirmed by a divided Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, granted summary judgment for the USPS.

The Supreme Court first addressed the issue of what qualifies as an “undue burden” under Title VII in its 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63 (1977). Lower courts have since interpreted that decision as establishing a de minimis standard for the circumstances in which an employer can reject an accommodation request for being unduly burdensome. The District Court imposed that de minimis standard in granting summary judgment for USPS, finding that Groff’s refusal to deliver packages on Sundays “imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale.”

Groff appealed the decision, asking the Court to apply a standard similar to that used for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Under the ADA, “undue hardship” is defined as an “action requiring significant difficulty or expense.”

What Groff Changes

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Alito stated that lower courts have incorrectly “latched on” to de minimis as the governing standard, despite the fact that the Hardison court itself uses the phrase “substantial costs or expenditures” to describe the burden on employers. Making reference to the fact that this erroneous de minimis test has resulted in the routine denial of even minor accommodation requests, the Court clarified the holding in Hardison to mean that “undue hardship” is shown “when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.”

The Court stopped short of bowing to Groff’s request to impute the ADA’s standard into Title VII cases, however. Rather than directing lower courts to “draw upon decades of ADA caselaw” and use the “significant difficulty or expense” standard, the Court wrote, “[W]e 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.”

A concurrence penned by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justice Jackson states that the Court’s refusal to replace Hardison’s de minimis standard with that of the ADA is a “wise choice,” as it respects the fact that Congress has spurned multiple opportunities to reverse Hardison and adopt the language of the ADA, despite ample opportunity to do so.

Implications for Employers

The Court stated the belief that its holding would not significantly alter the way the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) issues guidance on offering religious accommodations. The decision states that “today’s clarification may prompt little, if any, change in the agency’s guidance explaining why no undue hardship is imposed by temporary costs, voluntary shift swapping, occasional shift swapping, or administrative costs.” Yet there is no doubt that the Court’s rejection of the de minimis standard makes it more difficult for employers to reject such requests as they will now have to demonstrate “substantial increased costs” in order to do so. Conversely, unlike before, employers must now consider undertaking such measures as amending work schedules, overtime work, temporary work, etc., when responding to religious accommodation requests.

Employers should educate all employees who have authority to evaluate accommodation requests on this new standard. Employers should similarly update any company policies regarding religious accommodation requests to ensure the new standard is accurately reflected. And finally, as is often the case following landmark rulings, employers should brace themselves for increased litigation surrounding religious accommodation requests.