Last week, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for religious schools in two cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Agnes Morrissey-Beru , and St James School v. Biel. As we explained here , the two cases involved the important religious liberty principle called “the ministerial exception.” Broader than its name implies, the ministerial exception protects churches and other religious organizations from government interference in decisions about who leads worship or teaches religion. Where the ministerial exception applies, religious organizations’ personnel choices are not subject to state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Thus, for example, the Catholic Church’s doctrine requiring that priests be male cannot be challenged in court as sex-discrimination. Dating back to the Nation’s founding, the “ministerial exception” is really a religious autonomy principle grounded in both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It was born of the Pilgrims’ and other early Colonists’ desire to worship as they saw fit and select religious leaders of their own choosing without interference from the English government. Whether Jewish, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, or Muslim, religious organizations can choose their own leaders and teachers, even if such choices might otherwise violate an anti-discrimination law. In […]
