Employment / 1 min read
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the long-standing test for determining whether employers can refuse an employee’s requests for religious accommodations as undue hardship.
Under Title VII, employers must provide "reasonable accommodations" to workers if their religion prevents them from complying with their job duties or company rules unless the accommodations impose an "undue hardship" on the company. An employee may request such an accommodation if the employee cannot perform job duties or comply with a work rule due to a legitimately held religious belief (i.e., working on the Sabbath, taking a mandated COVID vaccine). Under the prior rule, courts held that an accommodation would pose an undue hardship if it imposed more than a "de minimis," or minimal, burden on the employer.
Now, an employer contending that accommodation poses an undue hardship must show that the accommodation would result in "substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
With respect to this increased burden, the Supreme Court advised that what is most important is that “undue hardship” in Title VII means what it says, and courts should resolve whether a hardship would be substantial in the context of an employer's business in the commonsense manner that it would use in applying any such test.