Supreme Court Revises the “Undue Hardship” Standard for Religious Accommodations under Title VII
Adrian Sanchez, Law Clerk
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much-awaited decision in Groff v. DeJoy. In a unanimous decision, the Court revised and tightened the standard for determining whether an employer may be excused from accommodating an employee’s religious belief that conflicts with a workplace requirement based on "undue hardship" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"). Departing from nearly fifty years of precedent, the Supreme Court clarified that in order to justify a failure to accommodate based on "undue hardship," employers must demonstrate that accommodating an employee’s religious accommodation request "would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
Religious Accommodations and the “Undue Hardship” Standard, pre- and post-Groff
Title VII requires employers to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs unless doing so would cause “undue hardship” to the employer. Unlike analogous accommodation provisions in the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA,”) the statutory language of Title VII does not expressly define what constitutes “undue hardship.” But, for nearly fifty years, courts analyzing the issue followed the framework and precedent established in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison. In Hardison, the Supreme Court concluded that an "undue hardship" existed under Title VII if a particular accommodation would pose "more than a de minimis" cost on the employer or its operations.[1] This “more than de minimis” standard was quite lenient for employers, particularly in contrast to the “undue hardship” standards under the ADA.
Following Groff, however, employers must now demonstrate that a religious accommodation “would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business” in order to justify a denial of the accommodation.[2] The Court in Groff employed a textualist approach to reinterpret the meaning of "undue hardship,” and reasoned that "hardship" is, at a minimum, something difficult to bear and that it becomes "undue" when it reaches an unjustifiable level.[3] Accordingly, the Supreme Court elaborated, “[when] understood in this way, ‘undue hardship’ means something very different from a burden that is merely more than de minimis, i.e., ‘very small or trifling.’”[4]
Employer Considerations Moving Forward
While the Court in Groff claims that their clarification of the undue hardship standard will “prompt little, if any, change in the [EEOC’s] guidance” relating to how employers handle religious accommodations, employers should nonetheless take Groff into account when evaluating religious accommodation requests. Moreover, employers should keep in mind that the Court in Groff did not define what constitutes a “substantial increased cost,” which is likely to be a point of contention in the absence of further court or EEOC guidance on the issue.
As always, Campbell Litigation is available to assist employers with religious accommodation questions as well as any other Title VII-related issues.
[1] TWA v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63 (1977)
[2] Groff v. DeJoy, No. 22-174, 2023 WL 4239256 (U.S. June 29, 2023)
[3] Id.
[4] Id.