The Supreme Court Provides Greater Protection for Jews and Other Religious Minority Employees

With all the hoopla last week about the United States Supreme Court’s decisions on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness programs, and websites for same-sex weddings, many people may have missed what was arguably the Court’s most important decision for the Jewish community.  Last Thursday, the Court issued a unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy, which will provide substantially greater protection for Jewish employees in the workplace.  Let me explain why Groff is so significant.

In 1972, Congress amended Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act to provide that an employer must reasonably accommodate the religious observance or practice of an employee or a prospective employee unless the accommodation results in undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.  In Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, however, the Supreme Court effectively eliminated the protections of this amendment, and dealt a significant blow to the idea of workplace accommodation for Jews and other religious minorities, by interpreting the phrase “undue hardship” to mean anything more than a de minimis cost.  As a result, employers were able to refuse requests for reasonable religious accommodations and Jews and other religious minorities received little protection in the workplace.

This past year, however, the Supreme Court chose to hear the case of Groff v. DeJoy and revisit its holding in Hardison.  Gerald Groff was an Evangelical Christian who worked as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service (USPS). Groff believed that, for religious reasons, he should not work on Sunday.  When the USPS began facilitating Sunday deliveries for Amazon, Groff was unwilling to work on that day.  As a result, Groff received “progressive discipline” for failing to work on Sunday, and eventually resigned.  Groff then sued USPS under Title VII, asserting that it could have accommodated his Sunday Sabbath observance without undue hardship to USPS’s business.  Groff lost in lower courts, based on their conclusion that USPS had met Hardison’s de minimis standard, but the Supreme Court decided to hear the case.

Because the case was of major importance to observant Jewish employees, in March 2023, the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), an umbrella organization representing more than 25,000 member families and approximately 135 branch synagogues throughout the United States, Canada, and Israel, filed a “friend of the court brief,” known as an “amicus brief,” with the Supreme Court.  I was privileged to work on that brief, which was authored by Kate Stith and Nicholas R. Reaves (together with law students) of Yale Law School’s Free Exercise Clinic.  The brief argued that the Supreme Court needed to interpret the language of Title VII more appropriately, to better protect Jewish employees and other religious minorities.

In its opinion issued on June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court clarified the meaning of Title VII, unanimously holding that the statute requires an employer to grant a reasonable accommodation to its religious employees unless the employer can demonstrate that the accommodation would cause “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of the business.”  The Court also stressed that animosity of co-workers to a particular religion or to a particular religious practice or expression in the workplace cannot be considered in evaluating an employee’s religious accommodation claim.

In its ruling, the Court relied upon NCYI’s amicus brief, in which NCYI argued that, under the previous de minimis standard, accommodation for Sabbath observers was left to the goodwill of their employers and co-workers.  The Court cited to NCYI’s amicus brief at page 13 of its opinion, noting that “a bevy of diverse religious organizations has told this Court that the de minimis test has blessed the denial of even minor accommodation in many cases, making it harder for members of minority faiths to enter the job market.”

The updated standard for religious accommodation found in the Supreme Court’s opinion should provide much greater protection to Jews and other religious minority employees in the workplace.  Jewish employees who are forced to choose between their jobs and their religious practices should now be able to rely upon the Groffdecision and obtain the religious accommodations to which they are entitled under federal law.

David Schultz is a Los Angeles attorney and the Chairman of the Board of the National Council of Young Israel.