Gerald E. Groff v. Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General

Notable Items:

• New Standard: We 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.[emphais and italics added]
• [Alito Falsification: From Note 14 of Hardison: The dissent is thus reduced to (1) asserting ... substantial "expenditures are required ...; (2) ... TWA could have done more ... without ... incurring substantial additional costs.; We accept the District Court's findings that TWA had done all that it could do to accommodate Hardison's religious beliefs without either incurring substantial costs or violating the seniority rights of other employees. ]
• Overturns Hardison by claiming Hardison was misunderstood for 40+ years.

Issue(s) Before the Court:

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Respondent's Claim(s):

Holding(s) and Disposition:

Material Facts:

• Gerald Groff is an Evangelical Christian who believes for religious reasons that Sunday should be devoted to worship and rest, not “secular labor” and the “transport[ation]” of worldly “goods.”
• In 2012, Groff began his employment with the United States Postal Service (USPS), ....
• In 2013, USPS entered into an agreement with Amazon to begin facilitating Sunday deliveries, ....
• Groff ... was told that he would be required to work on Sunday.
• He then sought and received a transfer to Holtwood, a small rural USPS station that had only seven employees and that, at the time, did not make Sunday deliveries.
• But in March 2017, Amazon deliveries began there as well.
• Finally, in January 2019, he resigned.
• A full recounting of the facts is available below

Procedural History:

• A few months later, Groff sued under Title VII, asserting that USPS could have accommodated his Sunday Sabbath practice “without undue hardship on the conduct of [USPS’s] business.”
• The District Court granted summary judgment to USPS, 2021 WL 1264030 (ED Pa., Apr. 6, 2021), and the Third Circuit affirmed.
• Exempting Groff from Sunday work, the panel found, had “imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale.”
• We granted Groff ’s ensuing petition for a writ of certiorari. 598 U. S. ___ (2023).

Rationale

Alito Majority Opinion

• A full description of the rationale is available below

Sotomayor Concurrance (Jackson)

• Petitioner Gerald Groff asks this Court to overrule Hardison and to replace it with a “significant difficulty or expense” standard.
• The Court does not do so.
• That is a wise choice because stare decisis has “enhanced force” in statutory cases.
• Congress is free to revise this Court’s statutory interpretations.
• Moreover, in the decades since Hardison was decided, Congress has revised Title VII multiple times in response to other decisions of this Court, yet never in response to Hardison.
• The Court, however, recognizes that Title VII requires “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”
• 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.
• With these observations, I join the opinion of the Court.

Full Recounting of Facts

• A list of the material facts is available above

Majority Full Argument

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to accommodate the religious practice of their employees unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”
• ... many lower courts, including the Third Circuit below, have interpreted “undue hardship” to mean any effort or cost that is “more than ... de minimis.”
• Part I
• See Material Facts
• See Procedural History
• Part II
• ... this case presents our first opportunity in nearly 50 years to explain the contours of [Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. ] Hardison ...
• Part II A [Review of Precedent]
• After some tinkering, the EEOC settled on a formulation that obligated employers “to make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees” whenever that would not work an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.
• In 1970, the Sixth Circuit held (in a Sabbath case) that Title VII as then written did not require an employer “to accede to or accommodate” religious practice because that “would raise grave” Establishment Clause questions. Dewey v. Reynolds Metals Co., 429 F. 2d 324, 334. This Court granted certiorari, 400 U. S. 1008, but then affirmed by an evenly divided vote, 402 U. S. 689 (1971).
• Responding to Dewey and another decision rejecting any duty to accommodate an employee’s observance of the Sabbath, Congress amended Title VII in 1972.
• Part II B [Review of Hardison]
• The Hardison case concerned a dispute that arose during the interval between the issuance of the EEOC’s ”undue hardship” regulation and the 1972 amendment to Title VII.
• The Stores Department [where Hardison was employed] played an “essential role” and operated “24 hours per day, 365 days per year.”
• Attempts at accommodation failed, and he was eventually “discharged on grounds of insubordination.”
• Applying this interpretation of Title VII and disagreeing with the Eighth Circuit’s evaluation of the factual record, the Court identified no way in which TWA, without violating seniority rights, could have feasibly accommodated Hardison’s request for an exemption from work on his Sabbath.
• “To require TWA to bear more than a de minimis cost in order to give Hardison Saturdays off is an undue hardship.” Hardison
• Although this line would later be viewed by many lower courts as the authoritative interpretation of the statutory term “undue hardship,” it is doubtful that it was meant to take on that large role. ["Not true" -- Alito at the State of the Union]
• ... the Court described the governing standard quite differently, stating three times that an accommodation is not required when it entails “substantial” “costs” or “expenditures.” Hardison, at 83, n. 14.
• [Alito Falsification: From Note 14 of Hardison: The dissent is thus reduced to (1) asserting ... substantial "expenditures are required ...; (2) ... TWA could have done more ... without ... incurring substantial additional costs.; We accept the District Court's findings that TWA had done all that it could do to accommodate Hardison's religious beliefs without either incurring substantial costs or violating the seniority rights of other employees. ]
• Part II C [Everyone got Hardison wrong for 46 years]
• Hardison does not compel courts to read the “more than de minimis” standard “literally” or in a manner that undermines Hardison’s references to “substantial” cost.
• Part III
• We hold that showing “more than a de minimis cost,” as that phrase is used in common parlance, does not suffice to establish “undue hardship” under Title VII.
• We therefore, like the parties, understand Hardison to mean that “undue hardship” is shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.
• Part III A [Textualism]
• [Wheee....we are philologists! We can use dictionaries!]
• So 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.
• 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.
• Part III B [New Standard]
• We 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.
• Part III C [Temporizing of New Standard]
• Accordingly, today’s clarification may prompt little, if any, change in the agency’s [EEOC] guidance explaining why no undue hardship is imposed by temporary costs, voluntary shift swapping, occa- sional shift swapping, or administrative costs.
• What is most important is that “undue hardship” in Title VII means what it says, and courts should resolve whether a hardship would be substantial in the context of an employer’s business in the common-sense manner that it would use in applying any such test.
• Part III D [Clarification of New Standard]
• An employer who fails to provide an accommodation has a defense only if the hardship is “undue,” and a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered “undue.”
• ... Title VII requires that an employer reasonably accommodate an employee’s practice of religion, not merely that it assess the reasonableness of a particular possible accommodation or accommodations.
• Faced with an accommodation request like Groff ’s, it would not be enough for an employer to conclude that forcing other employees to work overtime would constitute an undue hardship. Consideration of other options, such as voluntary shift swapping, would also be necessary.
• Part IV [And We Punt]
• Having clarified the Title VII undue-hardship standard, we think it appropriate to leave the context-specific application of that clarified standard to the lower courts in the first instance.
• Without foreclosing the possibility that USPS will prevail, we think it appropriate to leave it to the lower courts to apply our clarified context-specific standard, and to decide whether any further factual development is needed.
• The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
• The core of the rationale is available above