• Key point 2-04.1. Most courts have concluded that they are barred by the first amendment guarantees of religious freedom and nonestablishment of religion from resolving challenges by dismissed clergy to the legal validity of their dismissals. Termination
• Key point 8-06. The civil courts have consistently ruled that the first amendment prevents the civil courts from applying civil rights laws to the relationship between a church and a minister. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Key point 8-09. The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits employers with 20 or more employees and engaged in interstate commerce from discriminating in any employment decision on the basis of the age of an employee or applicant for employment who is 40 years of age or older. The Act does not exempt religious organizations. Many states have similar laws that often apply to employers having fewer than 20 employees. Labor Laws
A federal court ruled that it was barred by the first amendment guaranty of religious freedom from applying the federal age discrimination law to a 68-year-old priest who was applying for a “nonministerial” position with a missions agency that involved the performance of ministerial functions. A 68-year-old ordained Roman Catholic priest was denied a position with a missions agency. The priest sued the missions agency, claiming that its decision to deny him employment amounted to age discrimination in violation of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The missions agency asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit on the ground that any inquiry into its internal policies concerning the hiring of a priest is impermissible under the first amendment of the United States Constitution. According to the missions agency, any inquiry into whether it has violated the age discrimination law would compel the court to interpret internal church policies and practices which would constitute excessive government entanglement with religion, thereby violating the first amendment. The trial court agreed, concluding that “Congress did not intend for the [age discrimination law] to apply to clergy positions in a Roman Catholic Church.” The priest asked the court to reconsider his case on the ground that he was also seeking employment with the missions agency as a “brother,” which he claimed was a lay, nonministerial position. The missions agency insisted that a “brother” performs duties which are “clearly ministerial,” such as adhering to an oath of celibacy, obeying religious superiors, and participating in evangelical and outreach efforts of the church. The missions agency conceded that brothers need not necessarily be priests, but that they perform ministerial functions whether or not they are priests.
The court observed, “The [missions agency] attempts to invoke the ‘ministerial exception,’ a principle which has grown out of the Supreme Court’s reluctance to interfere with a church’s selection of its clergy. The ministerial exception precludes civil courts from adjudicating employment discrimination suits between ministers and the church or religious organization employing them.” The court then noted that the ministerial exception “has not been limited to members of the clergy,” but has been extended to “lay employees of religious institutions ‘whose primary duties consist of teaching, spreading the faith, church governance, supervision of a religious order or participation in religious ritual and worship.'” It quoted from a federal court decision concluding that employees whose role is “important to the spiritual and pastoral mission of the church … should be considered clergy,” and that “the ministerial exception … does not depend upon ordination but upon the function of the position.” Rayburn v. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 772 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir.1985).
The court referred to the following cases in which the ministerial exemption from employment discrimination laws was applied to persons who were not ordained clergy: (1) a hospital chaplain, Scharon v. St. Luke’s Episcopal Presbyterian Hospitals, 929 F.2d 360 (8th Cir.1991); (2) non-ordained faculty at a Baptist seminary, EEOC v. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 651 F.2d 277 (5th Cir.1981); (3) a theology teacher at a Catholic high school, Powell v. Stafford, 859 F.Supp. 1343 (D.Colo.1994).
The court concluded that “because the primary functions of a brother involve teaching, ministering, and ‘spreading the faith’ in more than twenty-seven countries around the world … a brother is the functional equivalent of a minister for the purposes of the ministerial exception,” and therefore it was “barred by the first amendment from reviewing the [agency’s] decision not to hire the [priest].” The court noted that “for more than a century the Supreme Court has followed a rule of deference to church authority in ‘religious or ecclesiastical disputes,'” and that the Court has recognized the constitutional concerns raised by interference with administrative control of churches, stating that “legislation that regulates church administration, the operation of churches or the appointment of clergy … prohibits the free exercise of religion.” Sanchez v. Catholic Foreign Society of America, 82 F.Supp.2d 1338 (M.D. Fla. 1999).
Application. This case illustrates the breadth of the clergy exemption from employment discrimination laws. Not only does the judicial refusal to resolve such cases apply to ordained clergy, but it also extends to (1) “lay employees of religious institutions ‘whose primary duties consist of teaching, spreading the faith, church governance, supervision of a religious order or participation in religious ritual and worship,'” and to (2) employees whose role is “important to the spiritual and pastoral mission of the church.” It is not ministerial status, but rather “the function of the position,” that triggers the exemption. Sanchez v. Catholic Foreign Society of America, 82 F.Supp.2d 1338 (M.D. Fla. 1999).
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