A U.S. Postal Service worker who took his fight against working on the Sabbath to the U.S. Supreme Court is an evangelical Christian, but not a Mennonite, as several media reports have indicated. The case was argued before the Supreme Court April 18.

Gerald Groff of Lancaster County, Pa., resigned as a rural letter carrier in 2019 after seven years on the job. The Postal Service did not deliver mail on Sundays until 2015, after it contracted with Amazon to deliver some packages.

Groff skipped 24 Sunday shifts over two years and was repeatedly disciplined. He resigned in 2019 and sued USPS for religious discrimination. USPS claims Groff’s refusal to work Sundays created an “undue hardship” on operations, and two lower courts agreed.

He is represented by First Liberty Institute, which focuses on defending religious freedom and represented many religious groups that pushed back against government restrictions on in-person gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Attorney Jeremy Dys told Anabaptist World Groff grew up within the Mennonite tradition.

“It formed much of his understanding of the importance of the Lord’s Day and even motivated him to do missionary work, even if it was not always organized by the Mennonite church,” Dys said. “He now attends a nondenominational church and remains committed to the lessons he learned from his Mennonite grandmother on the importance of honoring the Lord’s Day.”

Religion News Service reported the case might sound like another slam-dunk for Christian religious liberty that will bolster the Supreme Court’s reputation as a friend to the religious right.

Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a football coach in Washington state who sued after being suspended from his public high school for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers on the field after games. It ruled in favor of two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private religious schools. It sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

In all these cases, the court favored a Christian individual or organization. But Groff v. DeJoy presents a different case. Organizations representing several religious minorities — Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Seventh-day Adventists — have filed briefs in support of Groff, asking the court to overturn a 50-year-old ruling that gutted a civil rights statute’s protections for religious accommodation. If the court now rules to expand those religious workers’ rights, conservative Christians won’t be the only, or even main, beneficiaries.

At issue is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace and requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of their workers unless doing so would require an undue hardship.

In the 1977 case of Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court defined that hardship as a minimal burden. That set such a low bar that critics said any employer could deny religious accommodations for the most trivial of reasons.

Sabbath-observant Jews who cannot work on Saturdays have advocated rolling back the Hardison ruling for years. But others, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argue a new rule could place too many burdens on nonreligious employees. What would happen if a Christian refused to work with a gay person and demanded an accommodation, or a male Christian nurse refused to work with a female nurse during an overnight shift, citing the “Billy Graham rule” in which Christian men avoid spending time with women to whom they are not married?

Many expect a ruling to favor Groff. A ruling is expected in June.

Religion News Service contributed to this article.