Supreme Court Considers Religious-Freedom Case Involving Christian Postal Worker
When Gerald Groff first took a job as a mailman for the U.S. Postal Service in rural Pennsylvania, he was not required to work on Sundays. Amazon changed that. In 2012, the USPS signed a contract with the online giant to deliver packages on Sundays. Groff is a strict evangelical Christian. He refused, things turned nasty, and he left his job and asked lawyers to defend his statutory right to religious freedom.
Now, the case is with the Supreme Court, and the indications are that a majority of the justices will support Groff.
At first, Groff’s postmaster delivered the packages himself on Sundays. But other USPS employees were annoyed at Groff’s so-called special treatment. He was offered compromises, some of which displayed a startling ignorance of his straightforward beliefs: for example, a suggestion that he could observe the Sabbath on a different day of the week. Of course, he turned them down. His accommodation was withdrawn; and when he failed to show up for Sunday shifts, he was disciplined.
After he resigned in 2019, Groff went to court, pointing to the USPS’ obligations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the federal law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee based on religion and requires employers to accommodate an employee’s religious observance or practice unless it places an undue hardship on the employer’s business.
The lower courts decided that Groff’s beliefs did place an undue hardship on his employer. They specifically pointed to the objection of co-workers to picking up Groff’s Sunday shifts. Those lower courts based their ruling on a Supreme Court decision from the late ’70s, TWA v. Hardison, that defined an “undue burden” as anything more than a de minimus expense (a term meaning so minor as to merit disregard).
In oral argument before the Supreme Court last week, Groff’s lawyer Aaron Streett, senior counsel at First Liberty, told the justices that relying on Hardison “violates [Title VII’s] promise that employees should not be forced to choose between their faith and their job.” The “anything more than de minimus standard” used by courts, said Streett, “makes a mockery of the English language” and can’t be squared with the plain meaning of the term “undue hardship” used in Title VII.
