The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that Cheryl Perich, dismissed by the Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran School in Redford, Michigan, may bring a discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The decision overturns the district court's finding that courts are not allowed to intervene in the case because of the ADA's "ministerial exception" which gives a religious institution the ability to control employment consistent with its religious mission. Here, writing for the panel, Judge Eric Clay argues, Perich's role at the school was not religious in nature, leaving the exception inapplicable.
[W]hen courts have found that teachers classify as ministerial employees for purposes of the exception, those teachers have generally taught primarily religious subjects or had a central role in the spiritual or pastoral mission of the church.
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the district court erred in its legal conclusion classifying Perich as a ministerial employee. Perich spent approximately six hours and fifteen minutes of her seven hour day teaching secular subjects, using secular textbooks, without incorporating religion into the secular material.…The fact that Perich participated in and led some religious activities throughout the day does not make her primary function religious.
