Religious Accommodation Test on Thin Ice With Justices’ New Case

A decades-old US Supreme Court precedent making it easy for businesses to deny workers’ religious accommodation requests will be under the microscope now that the justices have a vehicle to reevaluate the standard.

Under the high court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, employers only need to show that a requested accommodation under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would impose a minimal, “undue” burden to be able to reject it.

But the justices agreed last week to revisit that legal test in a case involving a Christian letter carrier’s religious objection to delivering ...