WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with an evangelical Christian who was denied requests to take Sundays off to observe his Sabbath in a narrower ruling than some religious freedom advocates sought.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion for a unanimous court.
At the center of the case is Gerald Groff, a former U.S. Postal Service employee who wanted to take Sundays off for church and rest. That presented a scheduling conflict – and a burden on his colleagues, the government argued – after the Postal Service started delivering Amazon packages on Sundays.
Groff’s attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to toss out a 1977 precedent that made it easier for some companies to deny such requests. The court instead decided to send a signal to lower courts to interpret that 46-year-old precedent as being more generous to employees.
The decision could affect other situations where religion and workplace rules conflict, such as for religious dress. Some worried the case could also affect religious conduct at work, giving employees more leeway to exercise their personal views even if they were inconsistent with those held by their employers or colleagues.
A U.S. District Court and the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit sided with the Postal Service.
Groff started at the Postal Service after years of missionary work in Africa and Asia. He wanted a career that would allow him to keep his sabbath, and since mail isn’t delivered on Sundays, the job seemed to be a safe bet. Everything changed when the USPS signed a contract with Amazon in 2013 to deliver packages on weekends.
His supervisors initially exempted Groff from working Sundays as long as he covered other shifts. But their attempts to find volunteers for those days didn’t always work, and by 2018, Groff had missed 24 Sunday shifts. Disciplinary measures began mounting.
“I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019, told USA TODAY in April. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”
