Same Words, Different Meanings—Same Courts, Different Leanings: How the Supreme Court’s Latest Religious Accommodation Holding Changes the Law and Affects Employers

Abstract

The Supreme Court dropped several of its most anxiously awaited and controversial cases during the last week of June 2023. While two of the cases, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Students for Fair Admissions., Inc., v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, received most of the press, a third case will likely be the most consequential of the three for the hospitality industry. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, rejected a 25 year+ interpretation of a Supreme Court case defining employers’ obligations to accommodate religion. Because the Court released its Groff decision during the same week as the release of both 303 Creative and the Harvard cases, Groff was lost in the shuffle. However, we argue that Groff’s imprecise but radical change of what constitutes an undue hardship for religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will create confusion, may cause dissention, and will add to an already difficult labor market in hospitality and other industries. To support our proposition, this article examines (a) the development of religious accommodation law before 1977, (b) the 1977 Supreme Court case that the Groff Court rejected, (c) the subsequent precedent of that 1977 case, (d) the passing and development of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and then, (e) the effect of Groff.