The uproar over Project 2025’s “Sabbath overtime” reads like a scene straight out of America’s current political fever dream. Online pundits warn of creeping theocracy. TikTok prophets insist the blue laws are coming back. Cable commentators toss around words like “control” and “Christian nationalism” until they lose meaning.
Take a deep breath. The truth, like most things in constitutional law, is both simpler and stranger.
The proposal in question is a single paragraph buried in a 900-page policy draft. It says that Congress should amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to pay workers time and a half when they work on their Sabbath. That’s it. No bans, no commandments, no threat of state-imposed worship.
It’s not the Ten Commandments in legal code form. It’s more like a half-baked labor-law experiment that stumbled into a culture war.
What It Really Says
“God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest,” the document begins — a line that triggers every secular nerve in modern America. But it goes on to propose a specific, secular mechanism: extra pay for those who give up their rest day.
It doesn’t require anyone to rest. It doesn’t make Sunday a national holy day. It doesn’t force businesses to close. It just pays you more if you work during your Sabbath, whatever day that happens to be.
This is not theocracy. It’s economics.
The irony is that this idea aligns more closely with labor fairness than with religious imposition. It’s a kind of faith-based overtime rule: a financial nod to the reality that in a diverse society, religion doesn’t disappear at the workplace door.
The Groff Connection
To understand the deeper context, look back to Groff v. DeJoy (2023). That Supreme Court case involved a postal worker who refused Sunday shifts for religious reasons. The Court ruled unanimously that employers can’t deny accommodation unless it causes “substantial increased costs.”
That decision – one of the rare moments of constitutional clarity – revived the idea that religious liberty is not a favor from the boss but a right under the law. It forced employers to take religious practice seriously again.
Now comes Project 2025, clumsily translating that principle into the language of payroll. The logic is simple: if an employer can’t give you your Sabbath off, they should at least pay for the intrusion. One is legal respect; the other is economic fairness.
That’s not tyranny. That’s contract law with a conscience.
The Implementation Nightmare
Where this goes off the rails isn’t in principle but in practice. Try running a factory, a hospital, or an airline under this rule.
One worker’s Sabbath is Saturday. Another’s is Sunday. Someone else prays on Friday. Someone else says every day is sacred. How do you track it? How do you verify sincerity without violating privacy or crossing into theological territory?
You can’t. Not easily. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would drown in paperwork. HR departments would collapse under the weight of Excel spreadsheets. And the first employer who asks for proof of sincerity will end up in court faster than you can say “Title VII.”
It’s a bureaucratic landmine disguised as religious sensitivity. The intention is noble. The application would be chaos.
Not a Sunday Law, Not a Theocracy
Here’s the key point, the one the doomsayers refuse to grasp: this is not a “Sunday law.” A Sunday law is compulsion. It closes businesses, bans labor, and forces conformity.
Project 2025’s Sabbath-pay proposal does none of that. It doesn’t make you rest. It pays you more if you don’t.
If anything, it does the opposite of what Sunday laws once did. It acknowledges that Americans worship on different days — and some not at all — and tries, however awkwardly, to make space for that. It’s not a moral code written into law; it’s a payroll adjustment written in the language of conscience.
The Real Danger Isn’t Religion — It’s Confusion
The greatest threat here isn’t theocracy. It’s misunderstanding. The line between protecting faith and privileging it is razor-thin. The Groff decision got it right by focusing on burden and cost. Project 2025 risks getting it wrong by inserting faith into the machinery of payroll before defining what “faith” even means in that context.
But to call it a “plan for Christian control” is lazy analysis. This isn’t dominionism; it’s an administrative headache. It’s one of those ideas that looks righteous in a think-tank white paper and impossible in an HR office.
Freedom, in Practice
As a constitutional matter, the beauty of American law lies in its discomfort. The system bends to protect both belief and unbelief without endorsing either.
Groff v. DeJoy reaffirmed that principle in the courts. Project 2025’s Sabbath-pay plan, though awkward, gestures toward it in policy form. It may fail in execution, but it fails in the right direction — toward fairness, not control.
We can argue about details, and we should, but let’s not confuse a pay-rate proposal with a pulpit decree. This isn’t a sermon. It’s a spreadsheet.
Conclusion
If you want to worry about Project 2025, worry about the parts that actually concentrate political power. The Sabbath-pay clause isn’t one of them. It’s a footnote that awkwardly touches something sacred: the fragile balance between faith and freedom.
It’s messy. It’s flawed. It might even be unworkable. But it’s not the end of the First Amendment.
Sometimes a bad idea tells you more about who we are than a perfect one ever could.