The Supreme Court on Thursday used the case of a Christian mailman who didn’t want to work Sundays to solidify protections for workers who ask for religious accommodations.
In a unanimous decision the justices made clear that workers who ask for accommodations, such as taking the Sabbath off, should get them unless their employers show doing so would result in “substantial increased costs” to the business.
The court made clear that businesses must cite more than minor costs — so-called “de minimis” costs — to reject requests for religious accommodations at work. Unlike most cases before the court, both sides in the case had agreed businesses needed to show more.
The case before the court involved a mail carrier in rural Pennsylvania. The man was told that as part of his job he’d need to start delivering Amazon packages on Sundays. He declined, saying his Sundays are for church and family. U.S. Postal Service officials initially tried to get substitutes for the man’s shifts, but they couldn’t always accommodate him. When he didn’t show, that meant more work for others. Ultimately, the man quit and sued for religious discrimination.
The case is the latest religious confrontation the high court has been asked to referee. In recent years, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been particularly sensitive to the concerns of religious plaintiffs. Last year, the court split along ideological lines in ruling for public high school football coach who wanted to pray on the field after games.
Other recent religious cases have drawn wide agreement among the justices, such as upholding a cross-shaped monument on public grounds and ruling that Boston had violated the free speech rights of a conservative activist when it refused his request to fly a Christian flag on a City Hall flagpole.
In the latest case, a federal law — Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. But a 1977 Supreme Court case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, says in part that employers can deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business.
During arguments in the case in April the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was representing the Post Office, told the justices that the Hardison case as a whole actually requires an employer who wants to deny an accommodation to show more.
But Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion for the court that while some lower courts have understood Hardison the way the Biden administration suggested, other courts incorrectly latched on to the “de minimis” language “as the governing standard.”
“In this case, both parties agree that the ‘de minimis’ test is not right, but they differ slightly in the alternative language they prefer. … 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,” Alito wrote.
Total BS! Want the job? Do the work! So-called “religious belief” is fine, but on your own time. I believe in the great spaghetti monster who wants me to eat delicious pasta all the time, and never work. Do I get a paycheck from a company for doing nothing?
when he accepted the job he was no required to work Sundays….it started when the Post Office started delivering Amazon. that’s the only thing that is supposed to get delivered on Sunday. So his job requirements were changed after he was already working there.
When you accept a job, you accept a job. Sometimes you need to do one thing, and sometimes you need to do another. The idea of a “job description” is just that: a “description.” When you are fortunate enough to gain employment you need to accept that change is inevitable and you may have to adapt. And you are lucky if you are given the chance to adapt/change and still hold the job and get paid. Maybe you also should think about how you can add value to your employer’s business by doing more than just the minimum of the “job description” instead of just punching the clock and taking as much time off as you can. That’s actually how you prosper in the world. I’ve owned successful businesses and I’ve done everything from taking out the trash and making the coffee to closing multi-million dollar deals. You do what needs to be done. Or you can go somewhere else if you think the grass is greener.
he did go somewhere else…but I get it. We are forced to do things we don’t want to in order to survive these days.
We need a mayor in Salisbury with balls you should consider It again Joe, Salisbury is collapsing
The ones that do work don’t really work. They stop in front of your place and don’t get out instead just type in their computer they can’t access and then just leave. To lazy to get out of vehicle
Great SCOTUS is on a Roll this week !!!!! Keep it up !!!!! BAN Affirmative Action !!!!!!! Have EQUALITY !!!
One needs a fkking day off !!!!!
Backing Christians makes Democrat Anti-American Left Mad !!!! Too Bad