In wake of Supreme Court's Groff ruling, how to accommodate religion at work.

• Date: 01 August 2023
• Author: Davenport, Anniken

On June 29, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Groff v. DeJoy that employers must accommodate employees' religious practices and beliefs unless doing so creates an undue hardship. It defined undue hardship to mean the accommodation would result in "substantial increased cost in relation to the conduct of an employer's particular business."

The decision upended 47 years of religious accommodation law. The prior definition of undue hardship only required employers to show the accommodation would result in more than a de minimis cost--a light burden that led many employers to deny workers' accommodation requests.

Now, employers must revamp their religious accommodation process or risk litigation.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers...