Opinion of the Court
opinion stated that “the principal issue on which TWA and the union came to this Court” was whether Title VII “require[s] an employer and a union who have agreed on a seniority system to deprive senior employees of their seniority rights in order to accommodate a junior employee’s religious practices.” 432 U. S., at 83, and n. 14. The Court held that Title VII imposed no such requirement. Ibid. This conclusion, the Court found, was “supported by the fact that seniority systems are afforded special treatment under Title VII itself.” Id., at 81. It noted that Title VII expressly provides special protection for “ ‘bona fide seniority … system[s],’ ” id., at 81–82 (quoting 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(h)), and it cited precedent reading the statute “ ‘to make clear that
ordinary meaning of “undue hardship” and “more than … de minimis” led some to interpret the decision to rest on Establishment Clause concerns. Justice Marshall observed in his Hardison dissent that the majority opinion “ha[d] the singular advantage of making consideration of petitioners’ constitutional challenge unnecessary.” 432 U. S., at 89. A few courts assumed that Hardison actually was an Establishment Clause decision. See, e.g., Gibson v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 620 F. Supp. 85, 88–89 (ED Ark. 1985) (concluding that requiring an employer to “incur greater than de minimis costs” related to accommodating a Sabbath “would therefore violate the establishment clause”); see also Massachusetts Bay Transp. Auth. v. Massachusetts Comm’n Against Discrimination, 450 Mass. 327, 340–341, and n. 15, 879 N. E. 2d 36, 46–48, and n.15 (2008) (construing state law narrowly on premise that Hardison might state outer constitutional bounds). Some constitutional scholars also suggested that Hardison must have been based on constitutional avoidance. See, e.g., P. Karlan & G. Rutherglen, Disabilities, Discrimination, and Reasonable Accommodation, 46 Duke L. J. 1, 6–7 (1996); M. McConnell, Accommodation of Religion: An Update and a Response to the Critics, 60 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 685, 704 (1992); cf. Small v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water, 952 F. 3d 821, 829 (CA6 2020) (Thapar, J., concurring). In doing so, some have pointed to Hardison’s passing reference to a need to avoid “unequal treatment of employees on the basis of their religion.” 432 U. S., at 84. But the Court later clarified that “Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices” but instead “gives them favored treatment” in order to ensure religious persons’ full participation in the workforce. EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., 575 U. S. 768, 775 (2015).
