At the beginning of its October term, the U.S. Supreme Court typically announces the small percentage of appeals it has decided to accept and the much larger number of cases it declines to revisit. On Monday, the court’s list of rejected appeals includes one requesting that it clarify the legal standard for employers reviewing employee religious accommodation requests under Title VII.

In 2023, the Supreme Court significantly revamped this standard in its Groff v. DeJoy decision. That case rejected a prior precedent that allowed employers to reject accommodation requests that presented more than a de minimis burden, and replaced it with one that requires a demonstration of undue hardship. The Monday decision involved a case where the appellants asked the court to determine whether this undue hardship standard requires the employer to prove that the accommodation request presented a significant burden on its operations.

The plaintiffs appealed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision involving firefighters who refused COVID-19 vaccinations on religious grounds. They claimed that the Ninth Circuit decision allows employers to escape accommodation obligations by demonstrating a reasonable basis for concluding that the measure would present an undue hardship and not actual evidence of such burden. The employer responded that the plaintiffs had misinterpreted the Ninth Circuit decision, and that the case was decided on medical evidence of dangers from spread of the virus.

In addition to this decision, the Supreme Court rejected a number of additional unsuccessful challenges by employees to employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Although the court did not provide any reasoning behind these decisions, it apparently has little interest in revisiting the storm of litigation that accompanied employer attempts to require vaccines in order to return employees to work during the pandemic.

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