August 28, 2026 | Posted By: Hoyer Law Group, PLLC
A Standard That Stood for Nearly 50 Years
For decades, employers facing a religious accommodation request could deny it fairly easily, as long as granting the request would cost the business more than a genuinely trivial amount. That changed in June 2023, and the shift has real consequences for St Petersburg employees seeking accommodations today.
The Old Standard Employers Relied On
For nearly fifty years, courts applying Title VII of the Civil Rights Act followed language from a 1977 Supreme Court case suggesting that an employer only needed to show a religious accommodation would cost more than a minimal amount to qualify as an undue hardship. This became known as the de minimis standard, and it gave employers considerable room to deny accommodation requests over relatively small inconveniences.
This standard was notably lower than the one courts apply under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires an employer to show significant difficulty or expense before denying a disability accommodation. That gap between the two standards puzzled many employment law observers for decades, since the underlying statutory language in both laws uses remarkably similar phrasing.
- Old standard: any cost beyond a minimal or trivial amount qualified as undue hardship
- New standard: costs must be substantial in relation to the business’s operations
- The change came from Groff v. DeJoy, decided in June 2023
- The ruling applies to accommodation requests nationwide, including in Florida
What Groff v. DeJoy Actually Changed
The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the de minimis interpretation, holding that undue hardship under Title VII now requires showing substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of the employer’s particular business. This is a meaningfully higher bar than the old standard, and it means many accommodation denials that would have survived legal scrutiny before 2023 may no longer hold up.
Why This Matters for Schedule and Shift Requests
Religious accommodation requests often involve scheduling, such as an employee needing a particular day off for observance or a modified shift to accommodate prayer times during the workday. Under the old de minimis standard, an employer could often deny these requests by pointing to minor scheduling inconvenience alone. Under the current standard, that same inconvenience likely falls short of the substantial cost the law now requires before a denial is justified.
What Employers Still Can Argue
The ruling did not eliminate the undue hardship defense entirely. Employers can still deny an accommodation if they can show it would genuinely and substantially disrupt business operations, not simply create some inconvenience or require minor schedule adjustments here and there. Courts have been left to work out exactly where this line falls on a case by case basis, since the Supreme Court did not provide a precise formula for lower courts to follow.
Building a Claim Under the Current Standard
An employee whose accommodation request was denied before understanding this shift may have a stronger case than they initially assumed. A St Petersburg employment lawyer reviewing a denial evaluates whether the employer’s stated justification would actually meet the substantial cost standard the Supreme Court now requires, rather than relying on the older and considerably lower bar that used to control these cases.
Documenting the Denial and the Employer’s Reasoning
What an employer actually said when denying a request matters considerably under this standard, since vague or unsupported claims of hardship are less likely to survive scrutiny than specific, documented business impact backed by real numbers. A St Petersburg employment lawyer building a case typically requests any internal communications explaining the denial, since these records often reveal whether the employer’s justification was ever substantial to begin with.
Requesting a Confidential Evaluation
Understanding how this heightened standard applies to a specific denial requires a careful review of the facts involved. Hoyer Law Group, PLLC offers a confidential evaluation to St Petersburg employees who believe a religious accommodation request was denied without the substantial justification the law now demands from employers.