Today, the Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC issued a unanimous ruling on the First Amendment. While this blog regularly celebrates the Freedom of Speech clause, the decision focuses primarily on the Free Exercise Clause and, to a lesser extent, the Establishment Clause.
In a nutshell:
- Church had 2 types of teacher–lay and ministerial.
- Ministerial teacher develops disability and takes leave of absense; replaced by lay teacher.
- Church rules normally prioritize ministerial teachers, but when this teacher tries to get her job back, she is denied.
- She becomes insubordinate and complains of an ADA violation.
- She is terminated.
- Teacher sues the church for retaliation against her for making an ADA claim.
- Supreme Court says church wins.
Assuming there was blatant retaliation, the church still wins. Why? Because if the government were to tell a church they couldn’t fire a particular minister, that would prevent a church from freely deciding who gets to spread the gospel and who doesn’t. To its extreme, though excepted specifically in Title VII, if the government had the power to dictate who a church could fire, it could prevent the Pope from defrocking an American Bishop who pronounces the Shahada and converts to Islam. Basically, the 1st Amendment lets a religion freely decide who gets to be a minister, even if the reasons for hiring or firing are otherwise abhorrent to society. If you don’t like it, you are free to change religions. Or declare the person who did the firing a heretic and stone them. Either way.