Religious discrimination and accommodations have quietly become some of the EEOC’s enforcement priorities, and a string of recent lawsuits shows the agency is not shy about pursuing those claims. For employers, this is a good time to revisit how religious accommodation requests are being handled on the ground, not just on paper.
Background
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on an employee’s religion. Additionally, since 1972, it has expressly required covered employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious observance or practice, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business. For decades, employers operated under the understanding that “undue hardship” meant almost any cost beyond a trivial or “de minimis” one.
However, as we blogged about previously, the Supreme Court upended that framework in its 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy. The Court held that “undue hardship” requires a showing of… Read the complete article here...
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