A former postman will take the US Postal Service and its alliance with Amazon to the Supreme Court for a peculiar reason: he refuses to work on Sundays.
Gerald Groff, who was a postal worker for seven years, says he was discriminated against because of his religion after Amazon entered into an agreement with the postal department to distribute its packages, which required couriers to make deliveries on Sundays, something that was opposed to his Christian beliefs.
Groff is close to his faith and before becoming a postman he went on at least eight mission trips.
When he learned that his shifts would change, he offered his supervisors to work holidays and overtime to make up for his absence.
According to the Post Office, the accommodations requested by the devoted postman created an atmosphere of tension in the office and resentment from the rest of his colleagues.
Groff attempted to move to a smaller office, at the cost of losing his seniority.
But soon, that headquarters also joined the new shipping dynamics.
In 2019, Groff opted to resign after being reprimanded for his absenteeism.
Shortly thereafter, he filed a religious discrimination lawsuit that has gone through several courts before appearing this week in the Supreme Court.
The complaint is based on a 1977 ruling that set a precedent that employers must make allowances to accommodate their workers' religious practices unless the effort would place an "undue hardship" on the business.
Groff's fight looks promising, as three current Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch have ruled in the past in favor of revising the 1977 ruling to better clarify the religious protection it offers.
In recent years, the conservative-majority court has been favorable toward religious claims.
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