Trans World Airlines v. Hardison (1977)
Supreme Court Decisions on Religious Liberty
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Background Information
Hardison was hired by Trans World Airlines in a department which need to remain open 24 hour per day, 365 days a year. Some time after he was hired, Hardison became a member of the World Wide Church of God, a Sabbatarian group which requires that the sabbath is on Saturday and must be strictly observed. Hardison's was therefore unable to work from sunset Friday until sunrise on Saturday without violating his religious beliefs.
The company's seniority system allowed employees to choose shifts based upon who was most senior. When Hardison switched from one building in the department to another, he moved to the bottom of the seniority list and became unable to have a shift that accommodated his observance of the Sabbath.
Hardison was fired for insubordination when he refused to work on Saturdays and so he sued, claiming that his employers had failed to make reasonable accommodations for his religious beliefs. The company, however, argued that accomodating his religious beliefs would have forced them to violate the seniority rules of its labor agreement and that would have impacted other workers.
Court Decision
With Justice White writing the majority opinion, the Court decided 7-2 that TWA adequate efforts to accommodate Hardison's religious beliefs and that the company was justified in firing him when he refused to comply with his work assignments.
The problem for Hardison was not the company, which did make attempts to compromise, but rather the union which refused to exempt him from the seniority system. TWA could not unilaterally breach its agreement with the union because that would have been a violation of their collective-bargaining agreement, and accommodation does not require TWA to breach an otherwise valid contract with hundreds of employees for the sake of one.
Had TWA nevertheless circumvented the seniority system by relieving Hardison of Saturday work and ordering a senior employee to replace him, it would have denied the latter his shift preference so that Hardison could be given his. The senior employee would also have been deprived of his contractual rights under the collective-bargaining agreement.
Because the company runs a round-the-clock operation it has extra burdens that cause difficulties in the accommodation of employees' individual preferences. To force some other employee to work an unwanted weekend shift in the place of Hardison would have amounted to a sort of punishment for their not observing a Sabbath, and this would have constituted unequal treatment.
In their dissent, Justices Marshall and Brennan pointed out that it didn't make much sense to conclude that the requirement of employers to accommodate employees' religious requirements not be valid if that means that those employees be treated differently and be exempt from the work requirements that affect others:
The point is perhaps best made by considering a not altogether hypothetical example. Assume that an employer requires all employees to wear a particular type of hat at work in order to make the employees readily identifiable to customers. Such a rule obviously does not, on its face, violate Title VII, and an employee who altered the uniform for reasons of taste could be discharged. But a very different question would be posed by the discharge of an employee who, for religious reasons, insisted on wearing over her hair a tightly fitted scarf which was visible through the hat. In such a case the employer could accommodate this religious practice without undue hardship - or any hardship at all. Yet as I understand the Court's analysis - and nothing in the Court's response is to the contrary - the accommodation would not be required because it would afford the privilege of wearing scarfs to a select few based on their religious beliefs. The employee thus would have to give up either the religious practice or the job. This, I submit, makes a mockery of the statute.
Significance
This decision focused mostgly on the effects on other employees in accommodating Hardison's religious beliefs. Abandoning the seniority system and forcing another employee to work on weekends would constitute a punishment for not holding religious beliefs that required them to observe the Sabbath. In this manner, the law had the unconstitutional effect of promoting certain religious practices over others or over none at all.
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