Religious employees now have greater protection to exercise their faith in the workplace following this week’s unanimous Supreme Court decision in Groff v. DeJoy. In Groff, the Court remedied nearly 50 years of regular misinterpretation in the lower courts as to the religious accommodation requirements in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The source of the error was the 1977 decision, TWA v. Hardison, which said that an employer needs to show only a de minimis burden to deny an employee’s request for a religious accommodation.  

RFI’s Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team joined Muslim Advocates and The Sikh Coalition in filing an amicus brief in this case, which the Court cited on page 13 of the decision:

…a bevy of diverse religious organizations has told this Court that the de minimis test has blessed the denial of even minor accommodation in many cases, making it harder for members of minority faiths to enter the job market. See, e.g., Brief for The Sikh Coalition et al. as Amici Curiae 15, 19–20 (“the de minimis standard eliminates any meaningful mandate to accommodate Sikh practices in the workplace” and “emboldens employers to deny reasonable accommodation requests”)…

Read the Supreme Court’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy here and read RFI’s amicus brief here.