Court Voids Absolute Right to Not Work on the Sabbath

The Supreme Court, strongly reaffirming the constitutional separation of church and state, Wednesday struck down a Connecticut law that gave employees an absolute right to refuse to work on the Sabbath.

In an 8-1 decision, the court said that the law impermissibly advanced a religious practice and ignored the burdens it placed on employers and other employees. Workers with more seniority or those who wanted a weekend day off to be with their families or for other non-religious reasons were forced unfairly to defer to Sabbath observers, the court said.

“This unyielding weighting in favor of Sabbath observers over all other interests contravenes a fundamental principle of the (Constitution),” Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote for the court.

The justices stood squarely behind a legal standard they had adopted in 1971 to test the validity of laws involving government and religion. Under that test, such laws must have a non-religious purpose, must neither advance nor inhibit religion and must not excessively entangle government and religion. The Connecticut law, they held, failed the test.

The justices had appeared to be edging away from those standards last year when they upheld the authority of the city of Pawtucket, R. I., to include a Nativity scene in its annual Christmas display. But, earlier this month, the court invoked the test to invalidate an Alabama law that authorized a daily moment of silence in public schools as a means of encouraging students to pray.

The decision represented a defeat for the Reagan Administration and several religious and state governmental groups that had urged the court to uphold the Connecticut law.

But the court indicated that federal civil rights statutes and some state laws barring religious discrimination would still be permissible because they do not grant unqualified rights to refuse to work on the Sabbath. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” the religious practices of workers unless doing so would cause “undue hardship” to the businesses.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Thurgood Marshall, said that she considered the federal law valid because it calls for “reasonable rather than absolute accommodation” and protected all religious practices, not just the Sabbath observance.

Many states have enacted religious accommodation statutes or regulations for the workplace or have interpreted their state constitutions to require such accommodations. The California Supreme Court in 1979 held that employers must provide unpaid leave for religious holidays if they could do so without undue cost.

Case-by-Case Review

Benna Solomon, chief counsel for the State and Local Legal Center in Washington, which had represented several state and municipal government organizations in the case, said that the court’s decision would probably require a case-by-case review of state laws to determine their validity. Those that require “reasonable” rather than “unqualified” accommodation of an employee’s religious practices appear safe under the decision, Solomon said.

Lois Waldman, acting legal director of the American Jewish Congress, expressed disappointment that the Connecticut law had been struck down. But she predicted that many state laws requiring accommodation of religious observances “within reasonable limits” would survive scrutiny under the court’s decision.

The case before the court centered on provisions of the Connecticut law requiring employers, on request, to grant employees the day off on their Sabbath and barring employers from dismissing workers for refusing to work on such days--generally Sundays for Christians, Saturdays for Jews and Friday for Muslims.

Donald E. Thorton, manager of a department store in Torrington, Conn., had sought Sundays off to attend Presbyterian services. The store’s owners offered to transfer him to another store in their chain some distance away that was closed on Sundays or to keep him on in a lesser-paying job in Torrington. Thorton, whose suit was continued by the administrator of his estate after his death in 1982, rejected the offers and filed a grievance, citing the state law.

The Connecticut Supreme Court struck down the law, saying that it lacked a “clear secular purpose” and improperly gave workers a “benefit” on an explicitly religious basis.

State Court Upheld

In their decision (Thorton vs. Caldor, 83-1158), the justices upheld the state court ruling, noting that, although the government must protect religious freedom, it “must take pains not to compel people to act in the name of any religion.” The law impermissibly gave workers an unqualified right to exercise their religious convictions “no matter what burden or inconvenience this imposes on the employer or fellow worker,” Burger wrote.

Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented without comment.

In another action, the court ruled 5 to 4 that the Internal Revenue Service may seize funds from a joint account to collect unpaid taxes owed by one of the depositors. The decision enables the government to obtain such funds without having to file lawsuits. The Justice Department had contended that, without such authority, it would be forced to spend millions of dollars in court suits. (U.S. vs. National Bank of Commerce, 84-498.)