Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Sabbath: Mail Delivery Debate Goes to Supreme Court
An evangelical from Pennsylvania argues the postal service should have accommodated his Sabbatarian beliefs.
Maybe if Gerald Groff had only asked for one Sunday off, that would have been okay. Or he could have just asked for part of Sunday, shifting his schedule to deliver the mail after church, and that would have been fine too.
But Groff was a Sabbatarian, refusing to deliver mail any Sunday or any part of a Sunday. According to solicitor general Elizabeth B. Prelogar, that meant it was “unwarranted” and “inappropriate” for him to ask the United States Postal Service to accommodate his ongoing, every-week religious commitment.
“It’s about the nature of the accommodation,” Prelogar told the US Supreme Court during oral arguments in Groff v. Dejoy on Tuesday. “You’re just excusing someone from doing part of their job.”
The attorney representing the evangelical postal worker protested that wasn’t the right way to think about religious accommodations. The mail carrier wasn’t shirking. There were just limits on his time, because of his faith.
“It’s not a get-out-of-work free card,” attorney Aaron Streett said. “He offered to work Saturdays and non-Sunday holidays.”
The court will now have to consider when an employer has to accommodate an employee’s religious practice. In the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Congress said that employers have to be accommodating—as long as that doesn’t cause “undue hardship” to their businesses. A few years later, in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court ruled that a “hardship” meant anything “more than a de minimis cost,” using the Latin for “minimum” or “trifling.”
The nine justices and two lawyers debated ...