On Wednesday, July 8, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a much-anticipated ruling deciding that teachers at religious schools could not claim protections under anti-discrimination laws. The central issue in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru concerned the scope of the “ministerial exception”—a legal doctrine grounded in the First Amendment fashioned to protect a religious institution’s freedom to manage its internal operations, including making personnel decisions, without governmental interference. Consolidating two cases involving elementary school teachers at Catholic schools who claimed they were unlawfully terminated (one due to her age and the other because of a serious medical condition), the Supreme Court expanded the reach of the ministerial exception (previously only applied to individuals holding a “ministerial position”) to employees who perform “vital religious duties” in carrying out the institution’s religious mission. The decision clarified and resolved ambiguities stemming from a prior unanimous Supreme Court decision, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC , regarding who qualifies as a “minister” for the purposes of the ministerial exception. Our Lady stressed that there is no magic formula for making this assessment and cautioned against heavily relying on the semantics of an employee’s title or educational training. Instead, the Court […]
