Supreme Court Seems Ready to Strengthen Protections for Religious Workers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed poised on Tuesday to expand, though perhaps only slightly, religious workers’ protections for refusing to work on the Sabbath.

The argument in the case, brought by a Pennsylvania postal worker who said his Christian faith did not allow him to deliver mail on Sundays, was notable for the justices’ efforts to locate common ground.

“The argument has been productive in finding points of agreement,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said.

There was, for instance, something like consensus that a phrase in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, a key 1977 precedent, went too far in allowing employers to discriminate against religious workers. The decision said that employers need not accommodate workers if the effort imposed more than a “de minimis” burden on their businesses.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said there was general agreement that the phrase was a misstep.

“I think there’s common ground, too,” he said, “that de minimis can’t be the test, in isolation at least, because Congress doesn’t pass civil rights legislation to have de minimis effect, right? We don’t think of the civil rights laws as trifling, which is the definition of de minimis.”

He added, echoing an adage, “The law does not concern itself with trifles.”

The Hardison decision interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” workers’ religious practice so long as they can do so “without undue hardship” to the company’s business.

Much of the argument concerned what alternative interpretation of “undue hardship” the court should offer to guide lower courts and employers.

The case was brought by Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian and former missionary who worked as a substitute mail carrier. After the U.S. Postal Service struck a deal with Amazon in 2013 to deliver packages on Sundays, Mr. Groff said he had to choose between his faith and his livelihood, opting to quit after being disciplined for missing work.

Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Postal Service, said Mr. Groff’s refusal to work on Sundays imposed a significant burden on a small post office, was in tension with an agreement with a labor union and was bad for other workers’ morale.

“His absences created direct concrete burdens on other carriers who had to stay on their shifts longer to get the mail delivered,” Ms. Prelogar said of Mr. Groff. “That caused problems with the timely delivery of mail, and it actually produced employee retention problems, with one carrier quitting and another carrier transferring and another carrier filing a union grievance. That is an undue hardship under any reasonable standard.”

Despite occasional confusion in the lower courts, she said, the Hardison decision has been effective in protecting the rights of religious workers.

Justice Alito disagreed, pointing to supporting briefs filed in the case, Groff v. DeJoy, No. 22-174.

“We have amicus briefs here by many representatives of many minority religions — Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox Jews, Seventh-day Adventists — and they all say that that is just not true, and that Hardison has violated their right to religious liberty.”

Aaron Streett, a lawyer for Mr. Groff, urged the court to overrule the Hardison decision and replace it with a standard borrowed from civil rights laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires employers to provide an accommodation unless it would impose significant difficulty or expense.

Under current law, Mr. Streett said, disabled and pregnant workers receive more protection than religious ones. “A diabetic employee could receive snack breaks under the A.D.A. but not prayer breaks under Title VII, he said, adding that “an employee could receive weekly leave for pregnancy checkups but not to attend Mass.”

Justice Elena Kagan said that aligning the statutes was a task for Congress, not the court.

“Congress has had that opportunity to change it,” she said of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Title VII. “Congress has not done so.”

By the conclusion of the argument it seemed clear that Mr. Groff would emerge with a more protective legal standard. But the justices may return the case to the lower courts to apply the new standard to his case, and it was not clear that would prevail at the end of the day.

“The hard thing is how to apply it,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said, sketching out his interpretation of “undue hardship.”

“I understand that term in the original statute,” he said, “to reflect a balance between two important values: one, religious liberty and the other the rights of American businesses to thrive, and to thrive, you have to be able to make money.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that other employees’ morale must factor into the calculus. Morale may be hard to quantify, she said, but businesses are hurt if “employees aren’t as productive because they’re grumbling, they’re not willing to kind of go the extra mile, put their best foot forward.”

Mr. Streett, the lawyer for the postal worker, said those concerns should not suffice to overcome religious accommodation. “It’s not enough to have morale issues,” he said. “It’s not enough to just have grumbling.”

Justice Gorsuch proposed that the court issue a modest decision, one that merely rejected “this de minimis language.”

“Maybe we could do a good day’s work and put a period at the end of it,” he said, “by saying that that is not the law.”