Ministerial exception is crucial implication of religious liberty
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
Cherilyn Crowe | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 615-519-0620
June 21, 2011
WASHINGTON – A legal doctrine that bars most lawsuits between ministerial personnel and their employers is a “clear and crucial implication of religious liberty, church autonomy and the separation of church and state,” says the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday.
The BJC filed the brief in a case to be heard this fall by the U.S. Supreme Court involving an employment dispute between a church-run school for children in grades K-8 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a former teacher commissioned by the church. The case is Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, et al.
Click here to download the brief. (pdf)
The brief, which was also joined by the Christian Legal Society, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and the National Association of Evangelicals, said this First Amendment legal doctrine, called the ministerial exception, protects the fundamental freedom of religious communities to select their leaders.
“It should be remembered that at any point in time any given religious community is a mere generation away from extinction, and that teachers in religious schools are commonly on the front line of conveying the faith to children and forming them morally,” the brief states. “Given our nation’s deeply rooted commitments to religious freedom and church-state separation, an employment-related lawsuit in a civil court is not a permissible vehicle for second-guessing a religious community’s decision about who should be responsible for keeping the next generation.”
While widely accepted by lower courts as necessary under the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses, the ministerial exception has not been explicitly recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower courts have varied in their interpretation of the doctrine.
“In defining the ministerial exception, an approach that is too simplistic will undermine religious liberty,” said BJC General Counsel K. Hollyn Hollman. “The Court should put a premium on both the religious organization’s designation of ministry personnel as its religious representatives and the employees’ responsibility for performing important religious functions.”
-30-
The Baptist Joint Committee is a 75-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty organization that works to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all, bringing a uniquely Baptist witness to the principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.
