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European Court of Justice. In recent years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the American Supreme Court have taken some decisions regarding the hiring of religious employees.
For example, in 2012 a teacher laid off from a school linked to a Lutheran church in Michigan (US) lost her dismissal case, on the grounds that she was technically a minister and her bosses were therefore exempt from equality laws.
In 2014 , the ECHR vindicated the Spanish Catholic church after it effectively ended the teaching career of a priest who had married and joined a campaign against clerical celibacy rules.
DISCRIMINATION
However, a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which adjudicates the law of the 28-state European Union, has ruled in the other direction .
A German woman who is an expert on human rights and equality, was offered no interview when she applied for a post with the Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung (Evangelical Work for Social Workd and Development), which is a body associated with the Evangelical Church Germany ( EKD ), the mainline German Protestant German church.
The job involved writing a report on Germany’s compliance with a UN convention on racism. The candidate must belong to “a Protestant church, or of a church which is a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christlicher Kirchen in Deutschland”, the ad said.
Vera Egenberger considered that her application had been rejected because she did not belong to any denomination , so that she brought an action before and complained to her country’s Federal Labour Court, which turned to the ECJ for help.
Discrimination in employment on grounds of religion is regulated by EU law , in the form of Directive 2000/78 (which also bans discrimination on grounds of disability, age or sexual orientation in employment). ECJ: “GERMAN LAW HAS GONE TOO FAR” The ECJ said that “ German law had gone too far by allowing such a wide scope for religious employers to determine for themselves whether a particular job could be reserved to those of a particular faith”.It also pointed out that churches could only demand confessional allegiance […]