Workplace discrimination Supreme Court upholds autonomy of religious employers in employment discrimination cases

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that religious schools are exempt from most employment discrimination claims, doubling down on the autonomy religious employers enjoy to choose their leaders.

The 7-2 ruling came in two disputes between Catholic schools in California and the teachers they fired. Under a so-called ministerial exception, religious employers are given autonomy over their workers that is not available to other employers.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s majority opinion. Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

“The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission,” Alito wrote.

“Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.”

Sotomayor argued that the school’s opinion regarding the teachers’ religious role should not be the final word.

“That simplistic approach has no basis in law and strips thousands of school teachers of their legal protections,” she said.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the high court’s unanimous opinion in 2012 that allowed religious organizations to choose their leaders regardless of federal job discrimination laws. The latest question was whether the fired teachers performed enough religious duties to be considered “ministers” exempt from those laws.

It was one of three major cases the high court considered this year in the area of religious freedom and decided in favor of religious groups. On Wednesday, the court ruled 7-2 that nonprofit employers with religious or moral objections do not have to help provide insurance coverage for contraceptives. And the court ruled in June that a state may not grant financial support to children in private secular schools while denying the same support to families who have chosen private religious education for their children.

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In the employment discrimination cases, 5th grade teacher Kristen Biel was let go from St. James Catholic School after developing breast cancer and seeking medical leave to undergo chemotherapy. She sued successfully under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the school appealed. Biel lost her battle with the disease last year, leaving her husband Darryl to carry on her challenge.

The other teacher, Agnes Morrissey-Berru, who is not a practicing Catholic, taught for 16 years at Our Lady of Guadalupe School but was let go, the school said, based on her performance. She claimed age discrimination.

The schools relied on the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled the teachers deserved their day in court. The Trump administration took the schools’ side.

During oral argument in May, both conservative and liberal justices expressed concern about drawing lines among job descriptions. If a religion teacher can be fired notwithstanding workplace anti-discrimination laws, some wondered, what about a general curriculum teacher, a nurse, a coach, a janitor or a bus driver? 

A telling moment came when Ginsburg, a four-time cancer patient, questioned whether religious schools should be able to fire workers for reasons that have “absolutely nothing to do with religion, like needing to take care of chemotherapy.”

But in the court’s majority opinion, Alito went out of his way to note that “religious education is vital to many faiths practiced in the United States,” including Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists.

“When a school with a religious mission entrusts a teacher with the responsibility of educating and forming students in the faith, judicial intervention into disputes between the school and the teacher threatens the school’s independence in a way that the First Amendment does not allow,” he said.

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