Bottom line, can your employer compel you to work on the Sabbath if you have religious beliefs which you believe require you to be in church and rest on Sundays?
And if you have a co-worker whose religious beliefs make him or her unavailable to work on Sundays, does your increased Sunday workload impact your common employer’s right to deny that religious accommodation under a 1977 federal court ruling on Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Code?A former Pennsylvania postal worker is testing that question before the highest court in the land this week as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case Groff v. DeJoy. Blogger, reporter and lawyer Amy Howe explains the complex case at SCOTUSblog.com:
“Federal law prohibits employers from firing workers for practicing their religion unless the employer can show that the worker’s religious practice cannot ‘reasonably’ be accommodated without ‘undue hardship.’ In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison that the ‘undue hardship’ standard is met whenever the accommodation would require more than a trivial or minimal cost.
“The court agreed to review the case of Gerald Groff, a Christian and U.S. Postal Service employee who was disciplined after he refused to work on Sundays delivering Amazon packages. Groff went to federal court, where he argued that USPS had failed to provide him with reasonable accommodations for his religious practices.
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that USPS would suffer an undue hardship if it were required to accommodate Groff by excusing him from working on Sundays. Not scheduling Groff on Sundays, the court of appeals explained, affected the rest of his workplace – for example, by requiring his coworkers to cover his shifts or deliver more mail,” Howe explained.
Groff is a former Mennonite missionary who was a USPS letter carrier in a rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for seven years before the USPS – which does not deliver mail on Sundays – entered into an agreement with giant online retailer Amazon.
Groff told ABC: “They (USPS) began to ask people in my position to deliver on Sundays or holidays, and I told them, ‘I’m not going to be able to work on the Lord’s Day at all,’” Groff said. “The Bible says that we’re supposed to keep the Lord’s Day as unique and holy, a day that’s set apart to worship and honor God.” “
Appellate court documents cited in the Groff case reflect what the Postal Service believed that Groff’s refusal to work on Sundays caused a tense work environment, and resentment of USPS management and created a fiscal cost on operations.
A Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled: “An employer is not required to accommodate at all costs. Exempting Groff from working on Sundays caused more than a (minimal) cost on USPS because it actually imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale.”
The Supreme Court, it would seem, also must decide if the Groff case should hinge on the Old Testament interpretation of the admonition against work on Sundays or the New Testament interpretation.
In the Book of Numbers, failure to keep the Sabbath was a death penalty offense. The passage describes the stoning of a Sabbath-breaker. But the Bible in Mark 2:27-28 intones: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
In the context of future enforcement and interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964., the Groff case has to be about more than the Christian faith notion of the Sabbath – and must be germane to people of different faiths and atheists. That’s very difficult legal needle to thread.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
32 comments:
Your right to keep the Sabbath ends when it infringes upon my right to take my family out to dinner after church so Mama doesn’t have to be in the kitchen on the Lord’s Day.
The sabbath is sundown Friday to sundown on Saturday.
Sunday never has been, and never will be, the sabbath.
One of my many jobs as a teen was golf caddy which was both pleasant to perform and high paying, especially on Saturday and Sunday.
The quality of our lives would be unnecessarily diminished if some of us did not work weekends and blend religion into it as necessary.
Which of us has not grocery shopped, medicine shopped, dined out or needed the ER on Sunday, thereby causing others to work?
I didn't read Salter's drivel but this seems like something the employer and employee would work this out in the job interview. If the company opens on Sunday and the employee doesn't want to work on Sunday perhaps he should find another place to work.
Groff is likely to win this one. At least killing the “de minimis cost” standard, but loses on remand because the costs here are far above de minimis.
The guy should be free to honor and practice his version of the scripture, even if it's bad doctrine.
However, if work calls, that takes priority. Feeding his family is also scriptural.
He can always leave his government job and find work elsewhere.
Many businesses close the whole weekend.
Speaking as someone who sits through the modern day worship experience at a local church, let me be the first to admit that, most Sundays, I would pay someone for the privilege of having an excuse not to attend church. Will work for free.
I remember when you had to be sure to fill up with gas and pick up the cranberry sauce on Saturday because everything was closed on Sunday. Then you put the quarters in the machine to get the Sunday Clarion Ledger on the way home from church. Now nobody buys the clarion ledger, everybody shops on Sunday, and most don’t go to church any more. But things are obviously much better these days.
If you can not work the hours you find another job. Stop trying to justify being lazy with your religious beliefs.
@ 9:03 - "I didn't read Salter's drivel but this seems like something the employer and employee would work this out in the job interview. If the company opens on Sunday and the employee doesn't want to work on Sunday perhaps he should find another place to work."
It's very clear you didn't read.
In other words, "I freely admit I don't know what I'm talking about, but here's how I think the world should work."
Everybody has an opinion, and most are wrong. But it might help just a little bit if you learned a minimum amount about the issue before spewing forth your nonsense.
As a teen, I was miserable in church, especially religion class, because it was forbidden to argue with priest/nun/instructor. Nevertheless, I am privately religious, even if working on Sunday.
Hey Sid, keep pretending to be a yellow dog democrat while you sit on the board at Community Bank. You put a good front up but at the end of the day, you are a Scott County hypocrite.
Boo hoo!
The people who actually properly celebrate the Sabbath have to eat Chinese food on Christmas because everything else is closed!
If the job calls for working on Sundays a person should not ask for the job if they do not plan on working on Sunday. If you are not able to do the job get out of the way of someone who can do the job.
Folks should read the details before commenting. Guy was a rural mail carrier and the job didn’t require him to work on Sunday. USPS contracts to deliver packages for Amazon then they tell him he has to work on Sunday.
Who wants our national security officers or local law enforcement to take off on Sundays, giving Iran or carjackers free reign to attack us?
Quit your bitching and go to work.
If the courts were to side with this guy then this could get out of hand. What would stop the Muslims from saying they deserve 35 breaks each day to do their prayers?
if we have religion as an exemption for childhood vaccines, we should exempt people from their religious beliefs about a sabbath.
its all the way, or no way..
10:07 - You didn't read it either. Clearly the job did not require Sunday work when he was hired. Only later was the notion of Sunday work added when they started delivering packages for others on Sundays.
The employee wins. USPS is increasing stamps cost 3 cents in July. They can virtually raise stamp costs and hire subs at will since government employees approve the raises without hesitation.
USPS has subs running out its ears. This guy not working on Sundays is not going to poison the work environment nearly as much as the union has.
I do hope is they sub the job out they will hire people who can speak, understand, and read english. I used to have a postman who wasn;t able to do any of the above. Don't know how she got a drivers license.
9:27 - so why bother to go? You apparently don't get anything out of church, probably because don't put anything in to it.
I’m a born again church attending believer, but the employee needs to lose. You better believe if his child needed medicine on a Sunday he would go to the pharmacy on a Sunday, or go to the ER, etc.
No Bible verse makes Sunday anything special. The Bible also makes it clear that tithing was for Old Testament Israel and was related to crops and II Corinthians 9:7 gives the proper rules for Christian giving today, but Southern Baptist churches ram the tithe down the throats of the attenders.
2:03 - You are correct. The Bible does not mention Sunday.
but it does say "wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it". Now you can argue which day is the Sabbath until you're blue in the face; makes no difference to me, but God set aside one day that was to be treated as holy.
None of your opinions about the sabbath make a hooter's damn worth of difference. The constitution is what it is and will be supported in court.
Find another forum in which to act out.
@8:55. I have to admit I get a chuckle from the people that post the 10 Commandments in their yards that ignore this small detail.
They should make the other employees cover his shift on Sundays so he can attend his one-hour service.
"The constitution is what it is and will be supported in court."
You're right. The Constitution is what it is, but the Constitution doesn't mention anything remotely related to religious accommodation in a workplace.
The ignorance level here in the comments of the traditional Christian practice of not working on Sunday is astounding.
It was once common and plainly understood by most Christians that Sunday is the Christian version of the Jewish Sabbath. The New Testament records that the early Christians met on the first day of the week. For 2000 years or so Christians generally understood that the Christian Sabbath was to be a day of rest and worship. Yet ignorant modern Americans know better with very little knowledge of theology or history. No wonder Christianity has been on the decline.
I can tell you from personal experience that working seven days a week is counterproductive. There is a practical reason for a day of rest.
Hell, people cannot even be forced to work during the week. That is why we spend so much of our tax dollars on people who do not work. Someone has to give them money, they are not going to work for it.
Some of you Biblical scholars need to know that no version of The Bible delineates the specific seven days of a week that most of us observe - yet you carry on as if your belief is based in scripture.
The modern seven-day week can be traced back to the Babylonians, who used it within their calendar. Other ancient cultures had different week lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans.
Next up, you'll claim that your Bible demands a 10% tithe pledge.
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