Court Opinion

ID: 9430740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:27.943165+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:50.070298
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I agree with the Court’s rejection of the rationale of the Court of Appeals’ opinion, I would simply reverse its judgment. Remanding for further proceedings in the District Court is both unnecessary and confusing. Whether respondent Philbrook’s complaint is analyzed as an outright claim that he is entitled to six paid days of leave for religious observance or as an argument that petitioner’s employment policies, while facially neutral, fail to accommodate his religious beliefs, the record before us plainly discloses that he cannot prevail.
I
The school board has a clear duty not to discriminate against Philbrook because of his religious faith. Section 703(a) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 flatly prohibits an em*76ployer from discriminating against any individual by basing employment and workplace decisions on the employee’s or prospective employee’s religion. This stricture against disparate treatment based on religion is simultaneously extended and qualified by § 701, which defines religion for purposes of the Act. Congress defines religion to include “all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.” §701(j). The statute therefore imposes a duty on the employer to make reasonable accommodations, short of undue hardship, for the religious practices of his employees. Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U. S. 63, 74 (1977). The effect of § 703(a) is to impose a special duty upon the employer when— and only when — a conflict arises between an individual’s religious observance or practice and the employer’s policy.
The statute does not allow a plaintiff raising a claim under § 701(j) to charge immediately onto the field of undue hardship. Folded within § 701(j) are certain preliminary inquiries. First, the court must ask whether the employee’s job obligations are in conflict with his religious obligations. “The accommodation issue by definition arises only when a neutral rule of general applicability conflicts with the religious practices of a particular employee.” Hardison, supra, at 87 (Marshall, J., dissenting). Absent a conflict, it makes no sense to speak of a duty to accommodate; there is no competing claim on the employee for which the employer must make adjustments. If the duty does arise, the statute requires the employer to resolve the conflict if it can do so without undue hardship. As the Court correctly holds, the employer has no statutory duty to resolve the conflict in the way the employee requests as long as the solution that is adopted is reasonable. I find it equally clear that the em*77ployer has no statutory duty to do anything more than strictly necessary to resolve the conflict.
Because the existence and scope of the duty to accommodate depend solely on the nature of the conflict between the terms of the job and the requirements of the religion, it is essential to identify the alleged conflict as precisely as possible. In this case Philbrook’s faith prevents him from working on certain schooldays. The school board does not require him to work on any of those days; on three of those days each year it pays him even though he does not work, and on the other days it declines to pay him for the time that he spends discharging his religious obligations. The existence of a conflict is thus not immediately apparent.
Philbrook argues, however, that the contractual arrangement occasions two conflicts between his religious requirements and his employer’s job requirements. First, he argues that the employer’s practice of excluding religious observance as a permissible use of the three days of paid annual leave for “necessary personal business” is directly in conflict with his religious practice, because he needs to take those days as days of religious obligation. Second, during his unpaid absence from work on days of religious obligation, he is unable to do work and must later — or earlier — perform this work without separate compensation. In essence, he argues that the employer’s practice of requiring him to complete this work, which is an integral part of his job duties as a salaried employee, conflicts with his religious obligation to be absent on the days when he would otherwise have performed this work and been paid for it. An examination of these claims discloses that neither has merit.
H > — i
Philbrook has contended that the school board has discriminated on the basis of religion in the allocation of its paid annual leave, or more specifically, in the limitation it has placed on the use of three days of paid annual leave for neces*78sary personal business. Properly viewed, the conflict Phil-brook alleges is one which is not cognizable under § 703 and therefore entitles him to no relief. He points to the conflict, by no means specific to the practice of religion, between the Board’s leave policy and the needs of an employee who wishes to use the three days of necessary personal business leave for any purpose not allowed by the contract. The Board allows all of its teachers three days of paid annual leave for “necessary personal business” but prohibits them from using any of those days for “[a]ny religious activity.” On its face, this prohibition might appear to discriminate against employees who need to take a day off to attend church in favor of those who need a day off for secular reasons. The argument fails, however, because it does not fully describe either the scope of the separate provision for paid leave for religious purposes or the restricted scope of the provision for leave for necessary personal business.
The collective-bargaining agreement between the school board and the teachers’ union contains generous provisions for paid leave for various specific purposes. After stating that 18 days of annual leave shall be granted “for personal illness and/or illness in the immediate family,” the contract specifies 11 additional categories of personal leave, including 5 days for a death in the immediate family, 1 day each for attendance at funerals, weddings, graduations, and immediate family religious services, and 3 days each for “[m]andated religious observances” and “[n]ecessary personal business.” The teacher is not required to identify the specific character of his personal business, but the contract limits the teacher’s discretion by stating:
“Necessary personal business shall not include (without limitations):
“1. Marriage attendance or participation;
“2. Day following marriage or wedding trip;
“3. Attendance or participation in a sporting or recreational event;
*79“4. Any religious observance;
“5. Travel associated with any provision of annual leave;
“6. Purposes set forth under annual leave or another leave provision of this contract.” App. 100.
Philbrook does not contend that the leave policy is discriminatory because he is eligible for, or has actually received, fewer days of paid leave than members of other religious faiths or than teachers who have no religious obligations on schooldays. The basis of his principal discrimination argument is that the total of six days for mandated religious observances and necessary personal business is not adequate to enable him to take care of “the personal business that is most important and pressing to him: religious activity and observance,”1 whereas this combination of six days of paid leave is adequate for some teachers who have different religious and ethical commitments. Quite clearly, however, this argument rests on the premise that Philbrook’s special, that is, religious, needs entitle him to extraordinary treatment. His “discrimination” argument states a grievance against equal treatment rather than a claim that he has been the recipient of unequal treatment.2
*80This point comes into sharp focus when the contractual prohibition against using the three days of personal leave for “any religious observance” is seen for what it is, merely a part of the broader prohibition against using personal business leave for any of the purposes specifically authorized in the contract. The existing leave policy denies paid days to any teacher who proposes to take more paid days of personal business leave per year to fulfill his or her commitments than the contract allows. Philbrook’s wish to use his secular leave for religious purposes is thwarted by the same policy that denies an avid official delegate to a national veterans’ organization use of secular leave days for that activity in excess of the days specifically allotted for it under the contract. In fact, since three days are expressly authorized for mandated religious observances — events that recur each year— whereas most other categories of paid leave cover relatively infrequent contingencies such as a death in the family or attendance at a family wedding, it is highly probable that the leave policy as a whole tends to favor, rather than to disfavor, persons who must observe religious days during the school year. For example, an atheist who attends a wedding, a funeral, and a graduation on schooldays receives a total of three days of paid personal leave, but a religious person who attends the same three events on paid days also receives pay for three religious days.
I — I I — I
Philbrook’s second claim is that the board has a duty of reasonable accommodation “to mitigate the burden of the Board’s requirement that [he] work without pay in connection with his absence for religious observance.” Brief for *81Respondent Philbrook 24.3 This claim founders because it discloses no conflict between Philbrook’s religion and his employment. If he had been disciplined, or discharged, for taking too many days off for religious services, the result would be different, but the only inconvenience to which he is subjected is the necessity of doing work on paid days that he was unable to do during his days of religious observance. This inconvenience arises not because of any discrimination against religion, but because the employee’s missed day of work is unpaid. Every' employee who takes a day off from work for an unauthorized purpose suffers the same inconvenience as Philbrook; each loses a day of pay and must make up the work associated with that day. The obligation to perform the work carries over, not because the employee has exercised his religion in the one case or satisfied a secular business need in another, but for the generic and shared reason that the employee was not paid for a day on which he was hired to do work. Since no statutory conflict between Philbrook’s religion and his work duties occurred, the duty to accommodate his religious practices never arose.
> b — H
The present state of the record enables me to conclude that Philbrook states no claim of religious discrimination under § 703(a). In remanding the case, the Court apparently overlooks the plain fact that its rejection of the Court of Appeals’ view of the duty of reasonable accommodation eliminates the necessity for further factual findings. Under the Court of *82Appeals’ theory that the employer has a duty to accept any reasonable accommodation proposal made by the employee as long as it does not result in “undue hardship,” a remand to the District Court was appropriate to resolve the “undue hardship” issue. I do not understand why a remand is appropriate now. The Court of Appeals has already concluded that if no analysis of undue hardship is required, the Board’s policy of granting three days of paid leave and additional days of unpaid leave for religious observances complies with the statute.4 Neither that court nor the District Court saw any reason to make a special analysis of the “past and present administration of the personal business leave provisions of the collective-bargaining agreement.” Ante, at 71.
In view of the record, the factual analysis the Court calls for may satisfy the demands of the Court’s curious holding in Icicle Seafoods, Inc. v. Worthington, 475 U. S. 709, 714 (1986), but it cannot affect the outcome of this case. Whether the Board has administered the provisions for paid leave for secular purposes strictly or permissively has no bearing on Philbrook’s legally insufficient complaint that he *83has some but not enough leave for religious purposes.5 The employer has no duty to provide Philbrook with additional days of paid leave. Nor can the uses for which the board has historically allowed personal leave days possibly create a duty to pay Philbrook to perform the work he missed on days of religious obligation.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the part of the Court’s judgment that remands the case for further proceedings.

 “On the other hand, after Philbrook uses up his three days for religious leave, Ansonia’s personal leave policy does not allow him to use the remaining three days of personal leave for the personal business that is most important and pressing to him: religious activity and observance. Unlike the Jewish teacher, Philbrook is a member of a faith that requires more than three days away from work for religious observance. His important and necessary personal business, involving fulfilling his need to gain understanding of the world around him, to serve the highest interests of his community, and to provide guidance and stability for his family, are all served by performing his religious obligation and attending his church. Solely because these needs are fulfilled for him through religious observance rather than secular activity, he is prohibited from using his personal leave to meet them.” Brief for Respondent Philbrook 16.

 Denying the use of personal business days for religious purposes is no more discriminatory against religion than if the personal business leave category were entirely absent from the contract. Neither a decision to refuse personal business leave days altogether nor a decision to provide *80these days for specific purposes not otherwise provided for in the contract represents a discrimination against religion.

 As he explains:
“His job has at least three parts: For every class he must first prepare the lesson plan; then teach the class; and finally review his students’ classwork. On the days he is absent for religious holy days, he prepares the lesson plans for his classes and reviews them with his substitute. He then receives and corrects the assignments his students have completed in his absence. [App. 68-70.] Although his pay is docked, he is still required to perform a substantial fraction of the duties for which his pay was intended to compensate him.” Id.. at 24-25.

 “The school board argues that we should find that its longstanding accommodation of three days of paid leave and additional days of unpaid leave for religious observance constitutes a reasonable accommodation and thus satisfies its duty to accommodate, citing the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Pinsker v. Joint District No. 28J, 735 P. 2d 388, 391 (10th Cir. 1984). The Pinsker court held that a policy allowing two days of paid leave for religious reasons and additional days of unpaid leave satisfied the duty to accommodate. We presume that Ansonia’s leave policy is ‘reasonable.’ And if Title VIPs duty to accommodate were to be defined without reference to undue hardship, we would hold that the school board has satisfied its burden. The duty to accommodate, however, cannot be defined without reference to undue hardship. In many circumstances, more than one accommodation could be called ‘reasonable.’ Where the employer and the employee each propose a reasonable accommodation, Title VII requires the employer to accept the proposal the employee prefers unless that accommodation causes undue hardship on the employer’s conduct of his business.” 757 F. 2d 476, 484 (CA2 1985) (emphasis added).

 Though it is not necessary to my conclusion, the teachers’ modest use of personal business days indicates that they are not treated as general leave days. In the 1982-1983 school year, for example, only 2 of the 131 teachers in the school system used all three days; 80 used none. Plaintiff’s Exhibit 18.
In addition, the Board has strictly administered the use of necessary personal business days, limiting their use to the purposes not enumerated in the contract. The School Superintendent testified that the use of these three days’ leave is closely monitored. Teachers may take one of these days in their discretion, without giving a reason for their absence, but must notify the principal or their superior of their absence 48 hours in advance. The Superintendent testified that he insures that teachers do not use that one discretionary day with pay for any of the reasons specifically enumerated in the contract:
“Q: If, in fact, you find that a teacher has utilized that one day for one of the reasons specifically listed in the contract for which days are separately allotted, what action, if any, would you take?
“A: If I found out, they would be deducted a day’s salary for that one day.” App. 65.
The other two days of necessary personal leave must be approved by the Superintendent with 48 hours’ notice. The Superintendent reviews the request for leave, denying it if he does not consider it to be a necessary personal day. If the employee takes the day nonetheless, he or she is docked a day’s pay. Id., at 54.