KMK Law Management Rights Blog

In Groff v. DeJoy, decided today, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the standard for employers to determine what constitutes an undue burden that would permit an employer to reject an employee’s request for a religious accommodation. Under Title VII, employers are required to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious observance or practice if it is possible to do so without “undue hardship” on the conduct of the employer’s business. Until today, the seminal case on Title VII religious accommodations was the 1977 Supreme Court decision in Trans World Airlines Inc., v. Hardison. That case established the well-known standard that an employer is not obligated to grant a religious accommodation if the accommodation would create more than a “de minimis” burden on the employer’s operations. 

On April 9, 2019, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) signed the Pregnant Workers Act, SB 18, which requires employers who have at least 15 employees in Kentucky to provide reasonable accommodations to employees for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. The law becomes effective on June 27, 2019.

In a potentially important decision over workplace accommodations in an environment when telecommuting is more common, the Sixth Circuit ruled on April 10 that an employer does not need to permit an employee to work from home when an essential aspect of the employee’s position requires being in the office.