Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2012

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

132 S. Ct. 694 | 181 L. Ed. 2d 650 | 565 U.S. 171 | 2012 U.S. LEXIS 578 | 80 U.S.L.W. 4056 | 23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 46 | 2012 WL 75047

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Takeaway

In short, this case constitutionalized the ministerial exception: religious organizations have First Amendment control over the selection and removal of employees who serve as their religious leaders, teachers, or messengers.

Background

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School operated a Lutheran elementary school. Under the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s system, teachers could be either lay teachers or “called” teachers. Called teachers completed theological training, were formally commissioned as “Ministers of Religion,” and were regarded as called by God through the congregation. Cheryl Perich began as a lay teacher, completed the required training, accepted a call, and became a commissioned minister.

Perich taught mostly secular subjects, but she also taught religion four days each week, led daily prayers and devotional exercises, attended weekly chapel, and led chapel services about twice a year. After developing narcolepsy, she took disability leave. When she sought to return, the school had contracted with another teacher for the rest of the year and encouraged her to resign. Perich refused. After she appeared at the school, stated that she had consulted an attorney, and threatened to assert her legal rights, the congregation rescinded her call and terminated her employment.

Perich filed an ADA charge with the EEOC. The EEOC sued, alleging that Hosanna-Tabor retaliated against her for threatening an ADA lawsuit; Perich intervened and asserted federal and state retaliation claims. The district court granted summary judgment for the church under the First Amendment ministerial exception. The Sixth Circuit recognized that exception but held that Perich was not a minister because her duties substantially overlapped with those of lay teachers and were largely secular. The Supreme Court granted review and reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the First Amendment recognizes a ministerial exception that bars employment-discrimination suits challenging a religious organization’s decision to hire or fire one of its ministers.

Holding

Yes. The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses bar an employment-discrimination suit brought on behalf of a minister against her religious employer over the employer’s decision to terminate her.

Reasoning

The Court located the rule in both Religion Clauses. The Free Exercise Clause protects a religious group’s authority to shape its faith and mission by choosing the people who personify and teach its beliefs. The Establishment Clause independently forbids the government from becoming involved in ecclesiastical decisions about who will minister to the faithful.

History reinforced that conclusion. The founding generation had experienced English governmental control over religious offices and adopted the Religion Clauses to prevent the new federal government from exercising a comparable role. James Madison, both as Secretary of State and as President, treated the selection and removal of church officers as matters beyond civil governmental authority.

The Court’s church-autonomy precedents also established that civil authorities may not override a church’s decision about its ministers. Watson required civil courts to accept final ecclesiastical decisions on church governance; Kedroff held that freedom to select clergy is protected by the Free Exercise Clause; and Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese forbade civil courts from reviewing a church tribunal’s internal disciplinary decisions.

All federal courts of appeals had recognized some form of ministerial exception since the enactment of modern employment-discrimination statutes. Requiring a religious organization to retain an unwanted minister, or imposing liability for its refusal to do so, would do more than regulate an ordinary workplace decision: it would displace the organization’s control over its own religious leaders and messengers.

The Court rejected the EEOC’s view that freedom of association alone supplied the necessary constitutional protection. Religious and secular associations both possess associational rights, but the First Amendment gives special and distinct protection to religious organizations through the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.

Employment Division v. Smith did not foreclose the exception. Smith involved neutral regulation of outward conduct—sacramental peyote use—whereas this case involved state intrusion into an internal church decision central to the church’s faith, governance, and mission.

Issue #2

Whether Cheryl Perich was a minister covered by the ministerial exception.

Holding

Yes. Considering all the circumstances of her employment, Perich was a minister within the meaning of the exception.

Reasoning

The Court declined to adopt a rigid formula for ministerial status and stressed that the exception is not confined to the head of a congregation. Instead, it considered the totality of Perich’s position, including the church’s designation of her role, the religious substance behind that designation, her own representation of herself as a minister, and her religious functions.

Hosanna-Tabor held Perich out as a minister. After she completed eight college-level theological courses, obtained Synod approval, and passed an oral examination, the congregation called and commissioned her as a “Minister of Religion, Commissioned.” Her call was formally conferred by the congregation and could be rescinded only for cause through a supermajority vote.

Perich also held herself out as a minister. She accepted the congregation’s formal call to religious service, claimed a ministerial housing allowance on her tax forms, and later described herself as seeking to return to the teaching ministry.

Her actual duties helped transmit the Lutheran faith. She taught religion, led students in daily prayer and devotional exercises, took them to weekly chapel, and periodically selected liturgy and hymns and delivered a religious message at chapel. These functions made her an important instrument for communicating the church’s beliefs to the next generation.

The Sixth Circuit erred by treating Perich’s title as irrelevant, by giving dispositive weight to the fact that lay teachers sometimes performed similar religious duties, and by focusing too heavily on the amount of time she spent teaching secular subjects. Formal commissioning is not by itself conclusive, and time spent on religious tasks remains relevant, but neither consideration can be assessed in isolation. The question cannot be resolved by a stopwatch.

Issue #3

Whether the ministerial exception bars only reinstatement or also monetary and other relief based on a minister’s allegedly unlawful termination.

Holding

It bars the entire retaliation suit, including claims for frontpay, backpay, damages, and attorney’s fees.

Reasoning

Reinstatement would plainly violate the church’s First Amendment right to select its ministers because it would require the church to accept a minister it did not want. Although Perich abandoned reinstatement before the Supreme Court, that did not preserve her remaining claims.

Monetary relief would also impose a penalty on the church for terminating an unwanted minister. Awarding backpay, frontpay, compensatory damages, punitive damages, or fees would require a court to determine that the church acted wrongly in removing her, precisely the kind of judgment about ministerial employment that the exception forbids.

The exception does not turn on whether the church’s stated reason for termination was genuinely religious or pretextual. Its purpose is to reserve to the religious organization, rather than to civil courts, the authority to select and control those who minister to the faithful.

Issue #4

Whether the ministerial exception is a jurisdictional bar or an affirmative defense.

Holding

It is an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not a jurisdictional limitation on the court’s power.

Reasoning

Federal courts retain authority to hear ADA claims of this kind. The relevant question is whether the plaintiff’s allegations entitle her to relief once the First Amendment ministerial exception is applied, rather than whether the court lacks power to hear the case at all.

Concurrences

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas agreed with the Court but would give greater deference to a religious organization’s good-faith determination that an employee is a minister. In his view, the Religion Clauses protect church autonomy so strongly that a civil court should not second-guess a sincere religious judgment about ministerial status.

He warned that judicially constructed definitions or multifactor tests could privilege mainstream religious models over traditions with different leadership structures or understandings of ministry. The risk of civil liability could pressure religious groups to alter their beliefs and practices to fit a secular court’s conception of who counts as a minister.

Because Hosanna-Tabor sincerely regarded Perich as a minister, Justice Thomas would find that fact sufficient to apply the exception. The evidence described by the Court independently confirmed that conclusion.

Justice Alito

Reasoning

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, agreed that Perich was covered but emphasized a functional approach rather than an approach centered on formal ordination or the title “minister.” Many faiths do not use the term minister, do not have ordained clergy, or understand ministry to include a broad portion of their membership. A rule tied too closely to Christian terminology would fail to protect religious diversity.

The relevant constitutional concern is religious autonomy over personnel essential to a faith’s leadership, worship, rituals, and communication of doctrine. Thus, the exception should cover employees who lead a religious organization, conduct worship or important religious ceremonies, or serve as messengers or teachers of the faith.

Perich fit that functional standard because she taught religion, led students in daily prayers and devotions, participated in chapel, and sometimes planned and led worship services. Her secular teaching responsibilities did not diminish the constitutional importance of the religious duties she performed.

Justice Alito also explained why courts may not conduct a pretext inquiry into the church’s stated reason for dismissing a covered religious employee. Assessing whether the church truly regarded Perich’s threat to sue as inconsistent with Lutheran teachings on internal dispute resolution would require civil judges or juries to evaluate the importance and sincerity of church doctrine. That inquiry itself would undermine religious autonomy.