Professor Sues College for Discrimination

• Key point. Some church—operated schools are subject to federal laws banning discrimination on the basis of age, gender, and race. While most courts have refused to apply these laws to teachers who are members of the clergy, a few courts have done so when the school fails to adequately demonstrate the religious function and mission of the teacher.

In a surprise development, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) concluded that a religious organization had not engaged in unlawful discrimination. In recent years, the EEOC has routinely accepted, with little if any substantiation, the claims of church employees that they were discriminated against by their employer on the basis of their religion or sex. In some of these cases, the EEOC has gone so far as to rule that a church engages in unlawful "sex discrimination" when it dismisses an employee for engaging in premarital ...