Womble Employment Law Blog

Employers will now have to show a higher degree of hardship to deny employee requests for religious accommodation. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 29 C.F.R. § 1605.2(b)(1), employers are required to grant employee requests for religious accommodation “unless the employer demonstrates that [the requested] accommodation would result in undue hardship on the conduct of its business.” On July 29, 2023,  the United States Supreme Court unanimously clarified  in  Groff v. DeJoy  that a religious accommodation only results in “undue hardship” when “the burden of granting [the] accommodation would result in  substantial  increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”  The “substantial increased cost” standard is a departure from the lower “more than a  de minimis  cost” standard that has prevailed since 1975. For the last 48 years, employers could deny religious accommodations for causing “undue hardship” ...

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently clarified that the requirement that a plaintiff exhaust his/her administrative remedies before filing a discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is a mandatory claim-processing rule, and not a jurisdictional requirement. The decision increases the importance of raising the defense of failure to exhaust administrative remedies early in employment litigation, so as to avoid a potential waiver of the defense. Under Title VII, which is the core, federal anti-discrimination law, employees and job applicants are required to first file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and allow the agency to investigate before filing a lawsuit. This is commonly referred to as exhausting one’s administrative remedies. The EEOC charge must be filed within 180 days of when the alleged discrimination took place (or 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis)....