Court grants review in new batch of cases, including dispute on religious rights of employees - SCOTUSblog
The Supreme Court will review how employers must accommodate their employees’ religious practices, how courts should decide whether threatening statements are protected by the First Amendment, and whether a local government violated the Constitution when it confiscated and sold a $40,000 home based on the owner’s failure to pay $15,000 in property taxes.
Those issues are among a slew of new disputes that the justices added to their docket on Friday afternoon in an order list from their private conference earlier in the day. The justices granted review in 11 new cases for a total of eight hours of oral argument.
The cases will likely be argued in late April, with decisions to follow by summer.
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 on Friday 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...
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