Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has faced a lot of scrutiny over his tenure, but nothing quite like being named as the defendant in an upcoming Supreme Court case to be argued April 18. The court will determine whether the U.S. Postal Service failed to accommodate an employee’s religious needs as stated in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal employment law that “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), and national origin.” Title VII gives employees a right to action. This case could result in forcing employers to do more to accommodate the religious practices of their workers.
David Groff, the former USPS employee, alleges he had a legal right to practice his sabbath of “worship and rest” and not be assigned to work on Sundays. Groff, like other USPS workers, was bound by a collective-bargaining agreement that required him to work at least some Sunday shifts.
Groff began working for the postal service in 2012 as a noncareer employee whose job it was to fill in when other workers were not available, including on weekends and holidays. He did not experience problems until 2013, when USPS started requiring him to work Sunday shifts. According to Groff, he initially was granted an accommodation and permitted by his supervisor to find his own substitute coverage on Sundays. However, Groff was erratic in doing so and missed over two dozen assigned Sunday shifts.
In 2016, Groff was reprimanded and threatened with being fired for refusing the Sunday work assignments which USPS had since enforced as a no-exceptions Sunday policy. He resigned and claimed he was wrongfully targeted because of his religious convictions and filed a lawsuit for violations of his religious rights. A conservative group, First Liberty Institute, has taken up his case.
This portends to be a pivotal argument which will determine if the court justices further privilege religious claims as when they overturned Roe v. Wade and ruled in favor of a public high school football coach who claimed he lost his job after leading prayers on the field after games.
In a previous ruling, the Third U.S. District Circuit Court had ruled against Groff, siding with the postal service’s claim that Groff’s religious accommodation request placed an “undue hardship” on the employer. The Third Circuit Court applied the precedent set in Trans World Airlines v. Harrison, a 1977 Supreme Court case that deemed employers were not obligated to accommodate workers’ religious requests if they posed more than a trivial cost or disproportionate burden on the employer.
Groff is petitioning the justices to reassess what constitutes “undue hardship” under Title VII. He contends that the 1977 Supreme Court ruling is not sufficiently favorable to employees and allows religious needs to be overruled by the interests of employers. SCOTUS in 2020 declined to hear a similar case involving an employee at a Walgreens call center who requested not to work on Saturdays, which is the Seventh Day Adventists’ day of rest.
However, this time around, several justices have vocally supported an expansion of religious liberty rights, and each has penned a decision in favor of a religious liberty petitioner. Justice Samuel Alito ruled in favor of allowing local governments to set up Nativity scenes alongside nonreligious symbols and ruled against a school district that wanted to prevent an evangelical group from sending home fliers to elementary school children.
Neil Gorsuch formally overruled a longstanding case relating to the Establishment Clause (separation of church and state) in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when he sided with the former Washington state high school football coach having a right to pray on the field immediately after games. Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that Maine must subsidize tuition at some religious schools .
“Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between following their most deeply held convictions and keeping their job,” Groff’s lawyers argued. “There’s a balancing that should occur so that employers respect employees in reasonable ways. But an old Supreme Court decision has stripped away the protection for employees, and we’re asking the Court for an appropriate balance.”
“It is unlawful for employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of religion,” said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for First Liberty. “It’s time for the Supreme Court to reconsider a decades old case that favors corporations and the government over the religious rights of employees.”
There is mounting sentiment supporting this bold activism SCOTUS is poised to display as preparations are underway to reconsider the law in this area and likely reverse what they see as a wrong turn taken in the 1977 case. Yet others see this as another assault on the court’s traditional adherence to precedent and a foreordained strengthening of its crusade to place church over state.
Linda Greenhouse, a veteran journalist who covered SCOTUS for the New York Times wrote, “When the court doubtless rules for Groff later this term, the decision will not stand for a vindication of minority rights. It will instead signify the court’s complete identification with the movement in the country’s politics to elevate religion over all other elements of civil society. Religion is the lens through which the current court majority views American society.”
Dr. William Kolbe, an Andover resident, is a retired high school and college teacher, former Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga and El Salvador, and a mentor in Big Friends Little Friends. He can be reached at bila.kolbe9@gmail.com.