'Wolf in sheep's clothing': How a USPS worker's fight over Sunday shifts could change your workplace

The justices will hear arguments Tuesday in what one observer described as the “most wide-reaching religious liberty case in roughly half a century.”

Gerald Groff wanted to spend his Sundays at church. His employer, the U.S. Postal Service, wanted him delivering packages.

That simple dispute between an employee and his managers sparked one of the most significant religious cases to reach the Supreme Court in years – with the potential to shift the balance of power between employees and employers over weekend schedules, dress codes and how workers conduct themselves around colleagues.

The appeal raises a basic question with potentially sweeping consequences: How far must large employers go to accommodate the religious needs of their workers? For Groff, an Evangelical Christian who told his boss in 2017 that he wouldn’t cover Sunday shifts because of his faith, the answer became a personal and painful one. “I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”For nearly five decades, similar disputes have been guided by a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows employers to deny religious requests if they present more than a trivial cost. That meant companies could decline to alter schedules to account for a sabbath or allow an employee to wear a turban in most circumstances.

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to toss that standard. But his critics fear what the court’s conservative majority might come up with as a replacement. And they’re concerned that new standard could lead to workplace discrimination.

“There’s a huge can of worms that this opens up,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Letting people shift the cost of exercising their religion onto their co-workers in a way that harms their co-workers is the opposite of equality.”

The court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy on Tuesday.

How Amazon packages delivered a sweeping religious dispute

Groff started at the Postal Service after years of missionary work in Africa and Asia. He wanted a career that would allow him to keep his sabbath, and since mail isn’t delivered on Sundays, the job seemed to be a safe bet. Everything changed when the USPS signed a contract with Amazon in 2013 to deliver packages on weekends.