When his post office started requiring that he deliver Amazon packages on Sundays in 2015, Gerald Groff told his boss he couldn’t do the shift: As an evangelical Christian, he needed to observe the Sabbath.
While Groff promised to pick up extra hours and work holidays for his southern Pennsylvania post, colleagues weren’t always able to work for him on Sundays and he faced disciplinary action when he did not report for work. He resigned in 2019 and filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service.
That case, Gerald E. Groff v. Louis DeJoy, goes before the Supreme Court later this month. It has lined up a coalition of sometimes at-odds religiously aligned groups behind Groff, from conservative Christian to Orthodox Jewish to Muslim groups, as the nation’s faith communities have banded together to petition the court for the increased accessibility of religious accommodations in the workplace.
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Members of the unlikely coalition say the case highlights a fundamental truth about rights under the U.S. Constitution: Often, ensuring one’s own rights requires ensuring the rights of others, even those with whom you may disagree.
“This is not the first and I’m sure not the last time that’s happening,” said Nathan Diament, the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. “We all recognize that, for Americans of any particular faith to have their religious freedom protected by the law, it has to be protected for all faiths.”
For Faiyaz Hussain, Muslim Public Affairs Council’s senior advisor for strategy, policy and programs, the case is personal.
Hussain said when he was a young associate at a law firm, he sometimes felt awkward and uncomfortable blocking out his calendar for an hour every Friday to attend congregational prayer.
“While we’re in prayer…half my mind was [thinking] ‘oh is a partner calling me about something? Did they stop by my office wondering where I was?’” Hussain said.
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While Hussain said his colleagues were always respectful and he didn’t need to request an accommodation at the firm, he understands how Groff and others might feel when doing so.
“Even if I felt that, I can only imagine [with] people who are new to the workplace or in jobs that require them to be physically present every moment, how hard it might be for them to ask for accommodations of this nature,” he said.
However, the federal government argues that Groff’s request imposed a burden on his colleagues, who had to pick up extra shifts, and USPS’ conduct of business.
Attorneys cite the caveat of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate their workers’ religious observances unless doing so would be an “undue hardship”.
The government’s argument relies on a controversial precedent dating back to the 1970s. In Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, the court lowered the bar for what determines “hardship,” defining it as even a minimal cost or inconvenience to the employer.
The faith-based groups see the Groff case as an opportunity to redefine the standard.
“That ‘de minimis’ [cost] is not part of the statute, it’s a judge-made gloss that’s been added onto it, which makes a number of legitimate religious discrimination cases fall by the wayside,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Christian ministry and religious liberty organization.
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Liberty Counsel, like Muslim Public Affairs Council, filed a “friend of the court” letter advocating for justices to overturn the Hardison standard. Their common cause with Muslim Public Affairs Council on the Groff case stood in contrast to the groups’ positions in other issues. In last summer’s blockbuster abortion case, Liberty Counsel supported overturning Roe v. Wade, while MPAC expressed concern about doing so, saying in a statement the ruling was an “infringement on our core Islamic values.”
The case has particular implications for minority religions, according to Amrith Kaur Aakre, the legal director of the Sikh Coalition, a civil rights organization that primarily works on religious liberties cases. While Groff is part of the most common religion in the United States, it’s less common groups that stand to benefit the most from additional protections.
“We have a society and structure and policies that are put in place that take into account majority religious groups and majority communities,” Aakre said, giving pre-established business holidays that fall on days of Christian religious observances as an example.
Josh McDaniel, the director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Freedom Clinic that partnered with MPAC in a letter to the court, said his team found that Title VII cases over the past few decades tended to be brought by employees of minority faiths. Despite making up less than 1% of the U.S. population, he said Muslim employees filed almost 20% of the Title VII claims.
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It’s the wide potential benefit that has united such diverse groups from faiths such as Sikh, Orthodox Judaism and Seventh-day Adventists.
“The overarching ability of all Americans of all religions to practice their faith freely and have that protected by the law isn’t only a common interest, it’s also a common value,” said Diament, of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
To Aakre, of the Sikh Coalition, the fact that Groff v. DeJoy’s petitioner is Christian proves even majority groups can be impacted by the Hardison standard.
“For communities that feel like they can keep their distance from the plight of minority communities that are dealing with these hardships, they have to understand that if there are discriminatory policies and laws on the books, eventually even their majority communities will be impacted in an adverse way,” she said.
Still, Groff’s case has also received opposition from other groups, including those representing non-religious believers.
Several groups have shared the federal government’s call to revisit and revise the Hardison standard, rather than overrule it. Others have called the former postal worker’s arguments at odds with the American value of freedom of religion.
“Groff insists that his religious claim on those special days automatically prevails, and his colleagues must conform their lives and the lives of their families to accommodate him,”
the Center for Inquiry and American Atheists, Inc. wrote in a letter, noting other employees had their own objections to working on Sundays. “To grant such a preference for religious belief violates the First Amendment.”
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After the court hears oral arguments for the case on April 18, justices could decide to overturn the Hardison standard even if they rule that USPS made a good faith attempt to accommodate Groff’s religious practices.
“Two things could be true: the employer could have done everything they were supposed to do, and the standard could be overruled and elevated to be the ‘undue hardship standard,’” Aakre said. “No matter what happens, I sincerely hope the standard is elevated.”
A previous version of this story misspelled Amrith Kaur Aakre’s last name. It is spelled Aakre. The Globe regrets the error.
Jorja Siemons can be reached at jorja.siemons@globe.com. Follow her @JorjaSiemons.