Stock photo of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Joe Daniel Price/Getty Images) WASHINGTON ( JTA ) — A number of Orthodox Jewish groups are filing friend of the court briefs on behalf of an evangelical Christian postal worker who is taking his case to get Sundays off to the Supreme Court. The case, Groff v. DeJoy, seeks to expand the standard the Supreme Court set in a 1977 ruling regarding what constituted “undue hardship” to an employer in providing religious accommodation. Five years earlier, Congress had expanded the 1964 Civil Rights Act to guarantee freedom from discrimination based on religion, as long as employers would not face “undue hardship.” But it did not define the term. Groff v. DeJoy involves a Pennsylvania mailman who sought accommodations after the U.S. Postal Service in 2013 started Sunday deliveries on behalf of Amazon. At first, Gerald Groff was able to work around Sunday deliveries, but as demand for the service grew, USPS disciplined him for declining Sunday shifts. He quit and sued. (Louis DeJoy is the postmaster general.) Lower courts have ruled in favor of the post office, which is arguing that not being able to schedule a mail career to work Sunday […]
