Sabbath Accommodations as a Civil Right: History, Title VII, and the Path to Groff v. DeJoy

In Groff v. DeJoy, which concerned a Christian Sabbath observer, Jewish groups were vindicated by the Court’s overturning Hardison v. Transworld Airlines and strengthening Title VII’s protections for religion, particularly around employees’ Sabbath observance. This article positions Groff within the history of Jewish efforts to secure employment protections for Sabbath worship. Efforts to secure Sabbath accommodations were an outgrowth and expansion of early twentieth-century efforts to ensure Jews were protected by public accommodation laws and a product of attempts by litigators such as Leo Pfeffer to end mandatory Sunday closing laws in the mid-twentieth century. Sabbath accommodations became a critical way to strike at covert antisemitic employment discrimination because refusal to accommodate the Sabbath had enabled employers to discriminate against observant Jews. Based on this history, the article argues that the efforts to secure employment protections for Sabbath worshipers were not just attempts to secure a form of religious accommodation but need to be understood as a critical civil rights protection for a minority group. Conceiving of Sabbath accommodations as connected with Jewish civil rights provides a way for political progressives, who are increasingly hostile to religious accommodations, to embrace a more expansive reading of Title VII’s religious protections. These measures also provide one legal avenue to counter rising antisemitism.