![]() ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the date of an appeals court ruling in the case. Among them, the court ruled in favor of a public high school football coach who claimed he lost his job after he led prayers on the field after games.ĬORRECTION (June 29, 2023, 4:20 p.m. Three of the conservative justices, however, issued a statement at the time saying they were open to the idea of revisiting the 1977 ruling’s definition of “undue hardship.” Soon after that case was rejected, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and President Donald Trump appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, creating a 6-3 conservative majority even more favorable to religious claims.Īfter Barrett joined the court, the justices in 2021 turned away several cases asking them to revisit the 1977 ruling, but the court has ruled in favor of religious claims in others, several of them in its last term, which ended in June 2022. The court in 2020, when it had a 5-4 conservative majority, declined to hear a similar case involving an employee at a Walgreens call center who, as a Seventh-day Adventist, requested that he not work on Saturday, which is the Christian denomination’s day of rest. Carolyn Kaster / AP fileĪmericans United for Separation of Church and State, which advocates for keeping religion out of government and filed a court brief backing the employer, expressed relief that the ruling did not go further. Gerald Groff, a former postal worker whose case was argued before the Supreme Court, in Holtwood, Pa., in March. The American Postal Workers Union, which says it has about 200,000 members, filed a brief warning the court that a ruling in favor of Groff that creates a “religious preference” for scheduling work on the weekend would disadvantage other workers who do not share the same religious faith. Muslim women lose job opportunities as a result, the group said. ![]() That is in part because uniform policies do not take account of the hijab. Muslim women, who often wear headscarves known as hijabs, have often suffered because of the Supreme Court precedent favoring employers, CAIR’s brief said. Groups representing Christian denominations and other religious faiths filed briefs backing Groff, including the American Hindu Coalition, the American Sikh Coalition and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in a ruling in May 2022. A federal judge said that the Postal Service had provided a reasonable accommodation and that offering anything more than that would cause undue hardship to the employer and Groff's co-workers. Groff resigned and sued the Postal Service for failing to accommodate his request. After that, Groff faced disciplinary actions if he did not report to work. Based on his request for an accommodation, his managers arranged for other postal workers to deliver packages on Sundays until July 2018. ![]() ![]() Initially, Groff was not asked to work on Sundays, but the situation changed starting in 2015 because of a requirement that Amazon packages be delivered on that day.
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