American Postal Workers Union, San Francisco Local Alice Lindstrom Robert Davis v. Postmaster General

Section 703(a)(1) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(l) makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against an employee or prospective employee on the basis of his or her religion. Section 701(j) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(j) (1970 ed., Supp. V) states in turn:

The issue presented by the present case is the extent of an employer's obligation under Title VII to accommodate an employee whose religious beliefs prohibit him from performing a particular task attendant his employment position.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In 1980, the Postal Service began accepting draft registration forms pursuant to an agreement with the Selective Service System. The Postal Service required window clerks to distribute, partially verify, and collect forms'sfrom men who went to the Post Office to register. For a period of time, the Postal Service allowed window clerks with a religious precept that forbade them from processing draft forms to simply refer draft registrants to other window clerks willing to process the forms.

A revised regulation was promulgated by the Postal Service, however, which required all window clerks to process draft…