Can the Post Office Force a Christian to Deliver on Sunday?

Gerald Groff is one in a long list of people who’ve met this fate over the past half-century. Mr. Groff is a devout Christian who believes he shouldn’t work on Sundays in observance of the Sabbath. He asked his employer, the U.S. Postal Service, to accommodate his request by assigning him only to other days of the week. After initially attempting to do so informally, USPS refused to provide a consistent accommodation and began disciplining Mr. Groff for missing Sunday assignments. Facing near-certain termination, he resigned in January 2019 and filed suit alleging a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Mr. Groff lost in both district court and at the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy, which will re-examine how far employers must go in providing religious accommodations to workers.

Congress amended the Civil Rights Act in 1972 to require employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious needs so long as that doesn’t impose an “undue hardship” on the business. A plain reading of that text means that employers must make a real effort to provide accommodations when requested. They did so, until the high court eviscerated the provision in TWA v. Hardison (1977).

Like Mr. Groff, Larry Hardison was a devout Christian; he observed the sabbath on Saturday. He too asked his employer, Trans World Airlines, to honor his request to work on other days of the week. The company resisted, claiming that doing so would force the business to violate the seniority system embodied in its contract with its employees union. Mr. Hardison was fired, and he sued for religious discrimination. The court ruled against him, holding that his request amounted to an “undue hardship” because it would impose “more than a de minimis cost” on TWA.

With this ruling, the court shifted the law such that virtually any increased financial cost—even a few hours of a manager’s time spent sorting out scheduling changes—can remove the employer’s obligation to its religious employees. Under this standard, a boss can refuse permission for a Sikh to wear a turban, a Muslim to have a 10-minute prayer break, or an observant Jew a dedicated microwave for cooking kosher food in the staff kitchen.

Each of these examples has occurred since Hardison. Complaints of religious discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have more than doubled at some points over the past two decades—with nearly half of Title VII’s religious-accommodation appeals brought by adherents to faiths that account for less than 15% of the population.

Some business-community advocates claim that requiring robust protection would saddle employers with increased costs. But if the cost of accommodation is significant—not merely an inconvenience—businesses would remain exempt from providing it. Never mind that such allowances may prove salutary, making for a happier and more productive workforce.

Some on the left likewise contend that a standard that gives more religious accommodation for employees would generate a parade of horribles, including pharmacists denying women birth-control pills, office workers displaying antigay messages in their cubicles, public-school teachers insisting on reading Bible verses in the classroom, and more.

Those fears are unfounded too. Several states, including New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Washington, have had laws that mandate a higher legal standard for more than two decades. None of these horribles have come to pass, and businesses in those states haven’t been ruined by religious-accommodation requests.

The Americans with Disabilities Act provides a model for making such accommodations. The ADA sets the standard for an employer’s exemption from providing the accommodation as “undue hardship,” which is interpreted as removing the obligation if granting it would impose “significant difficulty or expense.” Employers have years of experience with this ADA provision, and it can function as well with religious requests in the workplace too.

The high court’s religious-liberty jurisprudence has evolved significantly since the 1970s. Then, its animating principles were of “strict separation” of church and state, paired with a vision of religion as being a mostly private matter concerned with belief, not practice. The court has since moved more toward a proper balance—insisting on government neutrality, neither disfavoring nor favoring religion. Groff v. DeJoy is an opportunity for the justices to reassert that religious liberty in America encompasses the freedom to act consistent with our beliefs—in our homes and places of worship, and our workplaces.

Mr. Diament is executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.