Opinion of the Court
Building 2 so that he could spend evenings with his wife. 375 F. Supp., at 889. In that new building, he did not have enough seniority to avoid work during his Sabbath. Attempts at accommodation failed, and he was eventually “discharged on grounds of insubordination.” 432 U. S., at 69.
Hardison sued TWA and his union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).[1] The Eighth Circuit found that reasonable accommodations were available, and it rejected the defendants’ Establishment Clause arguments. Hardison v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 527 F. 2d 33, 42–44 (1975).
Both TWA and IAM then filed petitions for certiorari, with TWA’s lead petition asking this Court to decide whether the 1972 amendment of Title VII violated the Establishment Clause as applied in the decision below, particularly insofar as that decision had approved an accommodation that allegedly overrode seniority rights granted by the relevant collective bargaining agreement.[2] The Court granted both petitions. 429 U. S. 958 (1976).
When the Court took that action, all counsel had good reason to expect that the Establishment Clause would figure prominently in the Court’s analysis. As noted above, in June 1971, the Court, by an equally divided vote, had affirmed the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Dewey, which had heavily relied on Establishment Clause avoidance to reject the interpretation of Title VII set out in the EEOC’s reasonable-accommodation guidelines. Just over three weeks later, the Court had handed down its (now abrogated)[3] decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971) which
- ↑ “Labor organization[s]” themselves were and are bound by Title VII’s nondiscrimination rules. 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(c) (1964 ed.).
- ↑ See Pet. for Cert. in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, O. T. 1975, No. 75–1126, pp. 2–3, 17–22.
- ↑ See Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 22).
