Foley & Lardner LLP partner Donald Schroeder is quoted in the Law360 article, “4 Issues To Watch As Justices Shake Up Bias Law,” exploring what the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Groff v. DeJoy means for employers.
Schroeder said the decision, which clarified a previous legal test for measuring the burden that religious accommodations put on employers, will make it easier for employees to establish a basis for accommodation as the test was reinterpreted in a way that makes it harder for workplace adjustments for religious workers to be denied.
Schroeder noted that if employers have treated requests for religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act any differently than they do requests for disability accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), now is the time to make those differing approaches match to be “more in line with the court’s expectations.”
“I would caution employers to use whatever protocol they’re already using for an ADA accommodation and apply it in this context,” Schroeder advised. “And then … when they do get a religious accommodation request, they can’t rely on perhaps an impact on employee morale. That’s not going to cut it. They’ve really got to look at other avenues [or] reasonable alternatives to accommodate somebody’s request for religious accommodation.”
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