SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 22–174

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GERALD E. GROFF, PETITIONER v. LOUIS DeJOY, POSTMASTER GENERAL

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third circuit

[June 29, 2023]

Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.

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.” 78Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §2000e(j). Many lower courts, including the Third Circuit below, have interpreted “undue hardship” to mean any effort or cost that is “more than . . . de minimis.” In this case, however, both parties—the plaintiff-petitioner, Gerald Groff, and the defendant-respondent, the Postmaster General, represented by the Solicitor General—agree that the de minimis reading of Hardison is a mistake. With the benefit of thorough briefing and oral argument, we today clarify what Title VII requires.

I

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.” Groff began his employment with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which has more than 600,000 employees. He became a Rural Carrier Associate, a job that required him to assist regular carriers in the delivery of mail. When he took the position, it generally did not involve Sunday work. But within a few years, that changed. In 2013, USPS entered into an agreement with Amazon to begin facilitating Sunday deliveries, and in 2016, USPS signed a memorandum of understanding with the relevant union (the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association) that set out how Sunday and holiday parcel delivery would be handled. During a 2-month peak season, each post office would use its own staff to deliver packages. At all other times, Sunday and holiday deliveries would be carried out by employees (including Rural Carrier Associates like Groff) working from a “regional hub.” For Quarryville, Pennsylvania, where Groff was originally stationed, the regional hub was the Lancaster Annex.

The memorandum specifies the order in which USPS employees are to be called on for Sunday work outside the peak season. First in line are each hub’s “Assistant Rural Carriers”— part-time employees who are assigned to the hub and cover only Sundays and holidays. Second are any volunteers from the geographic area, who are assigned on a rotating basis. And third are all other carriers, who are compelled to do the work on a rotating basis. Groff fell into this third category, and after the memorandum of understanding was adopted, he 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.

With Groff unwilling to work on Sundays, USPS made other arrangements. During the peak season, Sunday deliveries that would have otherwise been performed by Groff were carried out by the rest of the Holtwood staff, including the postmaster, whose job ordinarily does not involve delivering mail. During other months, Groff ’s Sunday assignments were redistributed to other carriers assigned to the regional hub. Throughout this time, Groff continued to receive “progressive discipline” for failing to work on Sundays. Groff resigned.

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, and the Third Circuit affirmed.

We granted Groff ’s ensuing petition for a writ of certiorari.

II

Because this case presents our first opportunity in nearly 50 years to explain the contours of Hardison, we begin by recounting the legal backdrop to that case, including the development of the Title VII provision barring religious discrimination and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) regulations and guidance regarding that prohibition. We then summarize how the Hardison case progressed to final decision, and finally, we discuss how courts and the EEOC have understood its significance. This background helps to explain the clarifications we offer today.

A

Since its passage, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has made it unlawful for covered employers “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges [of] employment, because of such individual’s . . . religion.” As originally enacted, Title VII did not spell out what it meant by discrimination “because of . . . religion,” but shortly after the statute’s passage, the EEOC interpreted that provision to mean that employers were sometimes required to “accommodate” the “reasonable religious needs of employees.” 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.”

Between 1968 and 1972, the EEOC elaborated on its understanding of “undue hardship” in a “long line of decisions” addressing a variety of policies. Those decisions addressed many accommodation issues that still arise frequently today, including the wearing of religious garb and time off from work to attend to religious obligations.

EEOC decisions did not settle the question of undue hardship. 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.

Responding to Dewey and another decision rejecting any duty to accommodate an employee’s observance of the Sabbath, Congress amended Title VII in 1972. Tracking the EEOC’s regulatory language, Congress provided that “[t]he term ‘religion’ includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”

B

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. In 1967, Larry Hardison was hired as a clerk at the Stores Department in the Kansas City base of Trans World Airlines (TWA). The Stores Department was responsible for providing parts needed to repair and maintain aircraft. It played an “essential role” and operated “24 hours per day, 365 days per year.” After taking this job, Hardison underwent a religious conversion. He began to observe the Sabbath by absenting himself from work from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, and this conflicted with his work schedule. Attempts at accommodation failed, and he was eventually “discharged on grounds of insubordination.”

Hardison sued TWA and his union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).[5] The Eighth Circuit found that reasonable accommodations were available, and it rejected the defendants’ Establishment Clause arguments. Both TWA and IAM then filed petitions for certiorari. The Court granted both petitions.

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. The Court found that not enough co-workers were willing to take Hardison’s shift voluntarily, that compelling them to do so would have violated their seniority rights, and that leaving the Stores Department short-handed would have adversely affected its “essential” mission.

In the briefs and at argument, little space was devoted to the question of determining when increased costs amount to an “undue hardship” under the statute, but a single, but oft-quoted, sentence in the opinion of the Court, if taken literally, suggested that even a pittance might be too much for an employer to be forced to endure. The line read as follows: “To require TWA to bear more than a de minimis cost in order to give Hardison Saturdays off is an undue hardship.”

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.

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. Hardison cannot be reduced to that one phrase. In describing an employer’s “undue hardship” defense, Hardison referred repeatedly to “substantial” burdens, and that formulation better explains the decision. 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.

A

As we have explained, we do not write on a blank slate in determining what an employer must prove to defend a denial of a religious accommodation, but we think it reasonable to begin with Title VII’s text. After all, as we have stressed over and over again in recent years, statutory interpretation must “begi[n] with,” and ultimately heed, what a statute actually says.Here, the key statutory term is “undue hardship.” In common parlance, a “hardship” is, at a minimum, “something hard to bear.” But under any definition, a hardship is more severe than a mere burden. 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.

When “undue hardship” is understood in this way, it means something very different from a burden that is merely more than de minimis, i.e., something that is “very small or trifling.” So considering ordinary meaning while taking Hardison as a given, we are pointed toward something closer to Hardison’s references to “substantial additional costs” or “substantial expenditures.”.

B

In this case, both parties agree that the “de minimis” test is not right, but they differ slightly in the alternative language they prefer. Groff likes the phrase “significant difficulty or expense.” The Government, disavowing its prior position that Title VII’s text requires overruling Hardison, points us to Hardison’s repeated references to “substantial expenditures” or “substantial additional costs.” 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.

What matters more than a favored synonym for “undue hardship” (which is the actual text) is that courts must apply the test in a manner that takes into account all relevant factors in the case at hand, including the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in light of the nature, “size and operating cost of [an] employer.”

IV

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. The Third Circuit assumed that Hardison prescribed a “more than a de minimis cost” test, and this may have led the court to dismiss a number of possible accommodations, including those involving the cost of incentive pay, or the administrative costs of coordination with other nearby stations with a broader set of employees. 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.

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