Statutory Religious Accommodation in Employment and the Problems of Judicial Intent and Outcome

The Groff v. DeJoy case unhappily, but inevitably, generates a variety of realistically unresolvable fundamental problems in typical statutory religious accommodation cases. Perhaps even more important, though, are the unintended and perverse results of Groff’s placing a generally heavier burden of religious accommodation on employers. The Groff standard indeed incentivizes the bringing of more religious discrimination cases, and both the winning and losing of such cases by religious claimants. But our adversarial cultural circumstances, including the typical inseparability of religion, politics, and culture, crucially affect the actual, but unintended, results of judicial reforms.

The Groff rule is likely to result, unintendedly, in greater, not less, overall religiously grounded alienation and demoralization in the typical workplace.