The majority-conservative U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to overturn a decades-old legal precedent — one that has long set the rules for how far employers must go to accommodate their employees’ religious practices in the workplace.
A chasm dividing the justices
As expected — given recent rulings involving the limits of First Amendment protection of religious liberty — the justices arrived at the Groff arguments with vastly differing perspectives on respecting past precedent generally as well as on religious liberty specifically.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were unreceptive as Groff’s attorney Aaron Street advocated for the Court to overrule Hardison’s interpretive rules for Title VII’s requirements.
“When there’s a statute involved, stare decisis is at its peak,”
When United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar took the podium for the Department of Justice, Justice Samuel Alito immediately began to champion the rights of “minority religions.”
Though stare decisis is typically a monumental hurdle to clear, the Groff case is proceeding before a bench that has already shown a willingness to jettison settled precedent, particularly in the area of religious expression.
You can listen to full oral arguments in the Groff case here.