When the Supreme Court first looked at whether employees could be forced to work on their sabbath day, it was the 1970s.
Thomas Jefferson’s theory of a “wall of separation” between church and state was the dominant legal view, and the justices cast a skeptical eye on the religious requesters — in that case airline employees — wondering why their need to pray on a Sunday was more important than a fellow worker’s desire to watch their kids’ football game.
The case before the justices involves Gerald Groff, a mailman who celebrates a Sunday sabbath and asked the U.S. Postal Service to make sure he had that day off. They cited the Supreme Court’s Hardison decision, a 1977 ruling that Trans World Airlines didn’t have to make accommodations for an employee’s religious beliefs if it involved more than de minimis cost.
By then, however, cracks were showing, with other rulings upholding a different tuition support scheme for religious schools and approving of a Christmas nativity display at a public building, in certain contexts. “What has happened over time is that the court, and especially now under Roberts, has shrunk the notions of establishment and coercion,” Mr. Schultz said. “Over time, Justices such as [Clarence] Thomas have come to see establishment as only including official state religion whereas coercion is narrowly defined to only involve real compulsion.”
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