NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Douglas Laycock about the Supreme Court's decision in Groff v. DeJoy to make it easier for employees to seek religious accommodations at work.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Religion has been on a winning streak at the Supreme Court, and a decision today continued that trend. In a unanimous ruling, the justices made it easier for workers to seek religious accommodations on the job. The court said an employer must grant a worker's request unless doing so would impose a substantial cost to the business. Douglas Laycock is a leading scholar on religious liberty and an emeritus professor of law at the University of Virginia. Thanks for joining us.
DOUGLAS LAYCOCK: Happy to be here.
SHAPIRO: So this case involved a postal worker who did not want to work on Sundays in observance of his faith. What's your initial reaction to the decision?
LAYCOCK: Well, I mean, this is a correction. And it's not the court, really, it's Congress. The employment discrimination laws prohibit religious discrimination, and Congress defined that to include religious practices and not just beliefs. And the statute says the employer must accommodate an employee's religious practice if it can do so without undue hardship.
SHAPIRO: Can I drill down on that undue hardship phrase with you? Because they said substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of the particular business. Parse that for us. What does that mean?
LAYCOCK: Well, I mean, you have to understand it in comparison...
NPR and NewsGuard tested six chatbots and four search engines with 30 questions built on false claims spread by Russia, China and Iran. The chatbots debunked the claims on average about three tim...