On October 5, 2011, I blogged about the case of Perich v. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, in which a federal appeals court found that a called teacher in a Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod church school was not a minister under the Ministerial Exception to the federal civil rights laws, and thus could sue her church employer for disability discrimination. On January 11, 2011, the United States Supreme Court reversed the appellate court’s decision, and held that the plaintiff called teacher was a minister under the Ministerial Exception, and therefore was not able to sue her church employer for violation of the American with Disabilities Act (or for violation any other federal employment discrimination law related to her dismissal).
The US Supreme Court held that both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment mandate that (i) the government cannot become involved in a church’s ecclesiastical decisions by contradicting a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers, and (ii) a religious group has the right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments of its own ministers. Moreover, the Supreme Court held that the purpose of the Ministerial Exception is not to safeguard a church’s decision to fire a minister only when it is made for a religious reason, but rather is to ensure that the authority to select and control who will minister to the faithful is the church’s alone.
The Supreme Court also held that the Ministerial Exception is not limited to the head of a religious congregation, and that there is no rigid formula for deciding when an employee qualifies as a minister, leaving the door open for future litigation between churches and those they call ministers. But, the Supreme Court found that in this case, the plaintiff was a minister because (i) her title as a called teacher represented a significant degree of religious training followed by a formal process of commissioning, (ii) the plaintiff held herself out as a minister by, for example, accepting the formal call to religious service, and (iii) the plaintiff conveyed the Church’s message and mission through religious instruction. The Supreme Court held that the appeals court did not give enough weight to the fact that the plaintiff was a commissioned minister, gave too much weight to the fact that lay teachers at the school performed the same religious duties as the plaintiff, and placed too much emphasis on the plaintiff’s performance of secular duties.
This unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court is a big win for advocates of religious freedom in this country, as it reaffirms at least part of the wall between church and state, and as tells the government, including its courts, that it has no place in choosing who will be employed as a religious minister. However, this decision should not be read too broadly. It is still up to the courts to determine if someone is a minster or not, before the Ministerial Exception can be applied. Thus, although the called teacher in this case was found to be a minister, it is possible that in other contexts the outcome would not be the same, especially if the called teacher’s ecclesiastical duties were more modest than those of Ms. Perich. — Adam Treiger