Mennonite in Supreme Court Case?

[RZehr]

Supreme Court strikes a blow for religious accommodation: rules in favor of Groff.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/suprem ... ork-sunday

[RZehr]

Groff says:

...
At first, I was able to work with my supervisor to find a solution: I worked every holiday that did not fall on the Lord’s Day and took extra route work on weekdays and Saturdays to make up for not working Sundays.

I was always willing to do so. I enjoyed my co-workers and was always grateful for their willingness to take Sunday shifts while I covered their shifts on holidays or Saturdays. I have personally heard from several of my former co-workers who have expressed their support for my case, for which I am deeply grateful.
...
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/supreme ... -lords-day

[RZehr]

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an "undue hardship" for the business. A Supreme Court case from 1977, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, said employers could deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose "more than a de minimis cost" on the business.

Groff's attorney argued that the court should scrap the "de minimus" test, which he suggested has been abused by lower courts to deny religious accommodations, in favor of the plain language of Title VII, which would define "undue burden" in the same way it is defined in other federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

"The government believes undue hardship arises whenever there is lost efficiency, weekly payment of premium wages, or denial of a coworker's shift preference," Streett told the justices during oral arguments. "Thus, under the government's test, a diabetic employee could receive snack breaks under the ADA but not prayer breaks under Title VII, for that might cause lost efficiency."

"To be sure, as the Solicitor General notes, some lower courts have understood that the protection for religious adherents is greater than ‘more than … de minimus' might suggest when read in isolation," Justice Samuel Alito wrote. "But a bevy of diverse religious organizations has told this Court that the de minimus test has blessed the denial of even minor accomodation in many cases, making it harder for members of minority faiths to enter the job market."

"We hold that showing ‘more than a de minimus cost,’ as that phrase is used in common parlance, does not suffice to establish ‘undue hardship’ under Title VII. Hardison cannot be reduced to that one phrase."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/suprem ... ork-sunday

[RZehr]

The progressive organization Justice Democrats has adopted a four-day working week, a policy that has received praise from prominent leftwing leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Justice Democrats, which has helped elect progressive lawmakers like Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, shifted to a four-day working week for its 20 employees starting last August on a six-month trial basis. In March, the group decided to extend the policy indefinitely after its employees reported the change allowed them to better manage the grueling nature of campaign work.

"US workers deserve a break. It’s time for a 32-hour working week" - Bernie Sanders

“A big reason why we ultimately decided to do a four-day week indefinitely is because of how much we trust everyone in the organization to prioritize what they need to prioritize,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats. “That extra space has, at least for us, improved productivity and people’s attitudes as they show up to work.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... -work-week

Funny how they want a four day work week, but apparently want Sunday to be one of those four days, upending 200 years of American norm.

[RZehr]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail. They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

[temporal1]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail.

They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

Thanks. Sadly, so important to know.

[Sliceitup]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail. They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

I think even USPS was asking that the court make the change they did make. It was argued by both sides that ‘de minimus’ wasn’t a good standard.

The real question, and where it would likely split the justices, is if they actually ruled on whether USPS did try to accommodate Groff until they faced ‘undue hardship.’

This feels more like the court said “yeah let’s clarify this to be more specific. Ok now lower courts can argue over whether it actually met the standard of undue hardship.”

[Ken]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail. They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

I don't see that spin anywhere. For example, this is CNN from today (emphasis mine)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/29/politics ... index.html

The Supreme Court revived the case of a former mail carrier, an evangelical Christian, who said the United States Postal Service violated federal law by failing to reasonably accommodate his inability to work on Sundays.

The court said unanimously that a lower court was too quick to deny the employee’s request for accommodation and should take another look at the impact the request would have on the Postal Service as a whole.

“We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote, penning the court’s opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurrence joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

A lower court had ruled against the worker, Gerald Groff, holding that his request would cause an undue hardship on the Postal Service and lead to low morale at the workplace when other employees had to pick up his shifts.

The new ruling, in clarifying previous precedent for religious accommodations, will likely make it harder for an employer to refuse to accommodate the religious beliefs of an employee under Title VII of the civil rights law. The Supreme Court left the door open that the Postal Service might still prevail in the case, and the justices said they were leaving it to the lower court to revisit the case under the clarified standard.

“An employer who fails to provide an accommodation has a defense only if the hardship is ‘undue,’ and a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered ‘undue,’” Alito wrote.

The opinion concluded that “Title VII requires that an employer reasonably accommodate an employee’s practice of religion, not merely that it assess the reasonableness of a particular possible accommodation or accommodations.”

“Faced with an accommodation request like Groff’s, it would not be enough for an employer to conclude that forcing other employees to work overtime would constitute an undue hardship,” the court’s opinion said. “Consideration of other options, such as voluntary shift swapping, would also be necessary.”

Sotomayor’s concurrence highlighted a distinction in the court’s opinion, noting that the court had ruled that Title VII requires that an employer, in rejecting a requested accommodation, must show that the accommodation would impose “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.” Her concurrence focused on how a proposed accommodation could impose an undue hardship on a business’ employees.

“Indeed, for many businesses, labor is more important to the conduct of the business than any other factor,” she wrote.

Not all effects an accommodation places on employees will amount to such a hardship, Sotomayor said, but “if there is an undue hardship on ‘the conduct of the employer’s business’ … then such hardship is sufficient, even if it consists of hardship on employees.”

And this is the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... otections/

The Supreme Court on Thursday strengthened protections for religious rights in the workplace, siding in part with a Sabbath-observant mail carrier who quit the U.S. Postal Service after he was forced to deliver packages on Sundays.

Gerald Groff, the former postal worker, had asked the justices to overturn a decades-old Supreme Court decision, which his lawyers said undermines religious protections by allowing employers to deny accommodations that would cause them more than a minor inconvenience.

In a unanimous decision, authored by Justice Samuel A. Alito, the justices declined to get rid of past precedent, and instead clarified that employers must meet a higher standard to reject a workers’ request related to religious observance.

At issue in Groff’s case is title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace and requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s observance unless that accommodation imposes an “undue hardship” on the business. In 1977, the court defined such a hardship as an accommodation that would place more than a minimal burden or “de minimis cost,” on the company’s operations.

Groff’s lawyers asked the court to overrule that decision, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, which has long drawn criticism from some conservative justices.

Instead, the court clarified Thursday that an undue hardship is “shown when a burden is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.”

[RZehr]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail. They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

I don't see that spin anywhere. For example, this is CNN from today (emphasis mine)

Right. The media wouldn't spin or slant anything. I do see it. Compare this with the way they report on the affirmative action decision.

NYT:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.
The 6-3 ruling could drastically alter college admissions policies across the country. Criticizing the decision, President Biden said this was “not a normal court” and directed the Education Department “to analyze what practices can build a more inclusive and diverse” student body.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29 ... reme-court

Meanwhile the NYT doesn't even mention the Groff ruling on its front page at all. Just ignores it.

USA Today:

The vote was 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case, with the court's conservative wing lining up behind Roberts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case, so that vote was 6-2.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 097694002/

I do see more now saying that it was unanimous, where initially they left that off. I had to search out what the ruling actually was to find out that it was unanimous, because none of them were saying it.

[Ken]

By the way, this was a unanimous 9-0 ruling, but all the liberal news sites omit that detail. They just say things instead like ""The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has a track record of expanding religious rights, often siding with Christian plaintiffs".

I don't see that spin anywhere. For example, this is CNN from today (emphasis mine)

Right. The media wouldn't spin or slant anything. I do see it. Compare this with the way they report on the affirmative action decision.

NYT:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.
The 6-3 ruling could drastically alter college admissions policies across the country. Criticizing the decision, President Biden said this was “not a normal court” and directed the Education Department “to analyze what practices can build a more inclusive and diverse” student body.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29 ... reme-court

Meanwhile the NYT doesn't even mention the Groff ruling on its front page at all. Just ignores it.

USA Today:

The vote was 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case, with the court's conservative wing lining up behind Roberts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case, so that vote was 6-2.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 097694002/

I do see more now saying that it was unanimous, where initially they left that off. I had to search out what the ruling actually was to find out that it was unanimous, because none of them were saying it.

The affirmative action case is far more consequential and split down conservative/liberal lines. So disagreement among the justices is obviously going to be the story. The court wasn't even consistent in its ruling. The exempted service academies, for example, on grounds that could apply equally to any other school. Which makes no logical sense. Although it isn't going to have that much effect frankly. Affirmative action is already banned in many states like Washington, California, Texas, and Florida.

The Groff case was far more minor (they just remanded back to the lower courts with instructions to use a different standard) and was unanimous so much less to write about.