SCOTUS decision makes it more difficult to deny religious accommodations

In a unanimous decision, Groff v. Dejoy, the U.S. Supreme Court revived a former U.S. Postal Service mail (USPS) carrier’s religious bias suit. In the process, the Court upended decades of lower court precedent regarding the proper analysis for determining whether a religious accommodation presents an undue hardship and must be provided under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Previously, many lower courts interpreted a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court opinion as setting a relatively low bar for showing undue hardship for denying religious accommodation requests. Employers only had to show that a requested accommodation would cause a more than “de minimis,” or minimal, burden on the employer. Moving forward, employers must show that the burden of granting a religious accommodation would result in “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”