Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo to all executive branch agencies and departments on Thursday aimed at strengthening federal protections for religious liberty.
The 26-page document updates the Justice Department’s views on questions including federal employment, safeguards for religious organizations and guidance on accommodations for religious practice required under law in light of recent Supreme Court decisions.
“Religious liberty is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a particular place,” Blanche wrote. “It also encompasses religious observance and practice as displayed in a person’s daily life. Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.”
One area of focus for Jewish groups in recent years has been the scope of religious accommodations required in the workplace under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other laws for Sabbath observance.
In 2023, the Supreme Court unanimously held in Groff v. DeJoy that the U.S. Postal Service had failed to accommodate the religious liberty rights of a Sunday-Sabbath-observing Christian employee.
Thursday’s memo notes that such observances are protected unless they cannot “reasonably” be accommodated.
“Covered employers are required to adjust employee work schedules for Sabbath observance, religious holidays and other religious observances even if such accommodations impose some costs on the business, unless such costs are substantial in the overall context of the business,” Blanche wrote.
“An employer who contends that it cannot reasonably accommodate a religious observance or practice must establish undue hardship on its business with specificity,” he stated. “It cannot rely on assumptions about hardships that might result from an accommodation.”
Other areas in which the memo lays out new guidance for religious liberty protections include federal rulemaking and autonomy for religious organizations.
“A law drawn to prohibit a specific religious practice may discriminate just as severely against a religious group as a law drawn to prohibit the religion itself,” Blanche wrote. “No one would doubt that a law prohibiting the sale and consumption of kosher meat would discriminate against Jewish people.”
