USA: New clash between religious freedom and the world of work

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/politics/groff-dejoy-supreme-court-religious-liberty/index.html

A recent controversy that has arisen in the United States once again recalls the problem of the compatibility of religious prescriptions with the employment sphere and, in the event of friction, re-proposes the question of which of the two instances (of the employee or the employer), which of the two interests (the individual spiritual or the collective material), which of the two freedoms (the economic or the religious) should bend the knee and engineer itself to accommodate the other, has prevailed.

Sunday rest, prescribed in Exodus XX, 8 and Deut. V, 12, is at the centre of the controversy in which Gerald Groff, of the evangelical faith, is opposing the US Federal Postal Service, where he started working in 2012, when mail was not delivered on Sundays.

In 2013, however, the US Postal Service, as a result of commercial agreements, started to make deliveries on Sundays as well, causing the first problems for Groff, who asked for and obtained a transfer to a smaller post office, which at the time was still exempt from Sunday work.

Again, however, at the beginning of 2016, mail delivery was also introduced on Sundays; this new situation of friction was initially dealt with by Groff and the post office management by resorting to continuous substitutions and Sunday shift changes.

Groff, who was exempted from Sunday shifts, for his part, worked unpaid overtime hours during the other days of the week to make up for it.

Beginning in late 2016, however, the Federal Postal Service began to complain about the increasing organisational costs resulting from this reasonable accommodation with Groff, who received repeated reprimands and disciplinary action due to his refusal to work on Sundays and finally, in 2019, resigned, while suing the US Postal Service for violating his religious freedom.

Having lost the case at first instance and on appeal, he has now turned to the Supreme Court: in terms of causa petendi, he claims that the Federal Postal Service violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg241.pdf), as well as Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (https://www.govinfo. gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-86/pdf/STATUTE-86-Pg103.pdf), i.e. the two regulations that introduced and strengthened the protection of religious freedom in the workplace as well, requiring the employer, all the more so if public, to welcome, support and favour the religious beliefs of employees, provided, and this is the only limitation set by the legislation, that this does not cause "particular hardship" to the company.

This concept, in se ipso very broad, was later clarified in 1977 by the Supreme Court itself, which, in the affaire "TWA vs. Hardison" (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/432/63/), held that it consists of "organisational complexity or excessive expense", the assessment of which is the responsibility of the employer.

Thus, the petitum is clearly delineated: the limits of compressibility of religious freedom, i.e., whether an employer (all the more so if public, indeed federal, as in the present case), can force one of its employees to have to choose between his faith and his job, we await the Supreme Court's answer.

Stefano Testa Bappenheim