A U.S. Forest Service officer who was previously denied an exemption from having to work on Sundays has been granted his request after seeking the help of legal counsel.
Adam Diemert, a Forest Service law enforcement officer based in Colorado, recently received the religious accommodation. Based in Glenwood Springs, Diemert is a devout Presbyterian who attends church twice on Sundays.
According to a legal team representing him, Diemert submitted two religious accommodation requests for Sundays off and was denied both times despite saying he would work in emergency situations on Sundays.
He is represented by the law firm Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP and the First Liberty Institute (FLI), a conservative legal group that specializes in First Amendment cases.
“We are grateful for the leadership of Secretary Brooke Rollins, Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden, and the rest of the leadership team at the Department of Agriculture, and for their protection of religious liberty for all Americans,” said FLI Senior Counsel Cliff Martin in a statement last week.
“The Department’s decision is in line with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that reasonable adjustments to the work environment often must be made to allow an employee to practice his or her religion when there is no substantial disruption or cost to the organization.”
Before Diemert assumed the role in 2024, the position had been vacant for years. When he was hired, he took personal leave on Sundays from March 2024 through the following 10 months and volunteered on two Sundays as needed. His lawyers contend that his willingness to work on Sundays during emergencies removed the government’s “undue hardship” justification for denying his request.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in June 2023 in Greg Groff v. Louis DeJoy that a lower court was wrong to rule that a postal worker had to work Sundays despite his sincerely held beliefs.
Justice Samuel Alito authored the opinion, writing that there needed to be a better definition for what constituted “undue hardship” on an employer being asked to accommodate an employee’s religious practices.
“What is most important is that ‘undue hardship’ in Title VII means what it says, and courts should resolve whether a hardship would be substantial in the context of an employer’s business in the commonsense manner that it would use in applying any such test,” wrote Alito.
“An employer who fails to provide an accommodation has a defense only if the hardship is ‘undue,’ and a hardship that is attributable to employee animosity to a particular religion, to religion in general, or to the very notion of accommodating religious practice cannot be considered ‘undue.’”
Last November, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced new guidance regarding religious accommodation and expression rights in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“USDA must provide reasonable scheduling accommodations for daily prayers, sabbath observance, and religious holidays unless it creates substantial operational burden,” noted the guidance, in part.
In a statement released at the time, Rollins said that “we must preserve religious liberty, not only as a constitutional guarantee, but also as a safeguard for every other freedom we hold dear.”
“From the very beginning, America has recognized the freedom of religion as the bedrock principle of our Republic. It is no accident that the First Amendment protects the free exercise of faith alongside the freedoms of speech and assembly,” stated Rollins.
“By protecting the right of every American to live out their faith and express religiously inspired ideas in public and in the workplace without fear, we are defending the very foundation of American liberty for this generation and the next.”
