10.19 Civil Rights—Title VII—Defense—Undue Hardship in Religious Accommodation Cases

10.19 Civil Rights—Title VII—Defense—Undue Hardship in

Religious Accommodation Cases 

Comment

            Title VII requires employers to make accommodations for an employee’s religious beliefs or practices unless the employer can show that the employee’s religious practice cannot “reasonably” be accommodated without “undue hardship.” The Supreme Court, in Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447, 468-71 (2023), clarified the standard for undue hardship. The Court explained that an employer must accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs unless it can show that doing so would “result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of” the employer’s business. Groff,600 U.S. at 470. Although the Court left it to the lower courts to perform the context-specific application of the clarified standard, it noted two things: (1) “a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered ‘undue’”; and (2) “Title VII requires that an employer reasonably accommodate an employee's practice of religion, not merely that it assess the reasonableness of a particular possible accommodation or accommodations.” Id. at 472-73.

In Petersen v. Snohomish Reg’l Fire & Rescue, 150 F.4th 1211 (9th Cir. 2025), the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal concluding that the defendant showed substantial burden in the context of a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Revised December 2025