When employees request a religious accommodation to avoid working on the Sabbath (or any other day for religious purposes), employers have fairly low legal standards to satisfy to legally deny the accommodation. This may come as a surprise to employers in South Florida, one of the most religiously diverse places in the United States, and where employers are frequently confronted with requests from employees for certain days off for the observance of religious customs. However, the federal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently issued a case that re-emphasized the low standard, called the “de minimis” standard, for denying a religious accommodation based on an undue hardship. In the case, Groff v. Dejoy, the Third Circuit applied the same standard that is applicable in the federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Florida, as well as Georgia and Alabama.

Groff involves a mail carrier who worked for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and observed the Sabbath on Sundays. In 2012, the USPS had contracted with Amazon to deliver Amazon packages, which included delivering packages on Sundays. The carrier wanted to avoid Sunday work, and the postmaster at the location where the carrier worked the postmaster agreed to exempt him from Sunday work. The postmaster would then find other carriers to cover the Sunday shifts.