This could spell the end of Catholic schools. I’ll give you some background info. It all comes down to the term “minister.”
Nine years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment bar suits brought on behalf of ministers against their churches, claiming termination in violation of employment discrimination laws. It’s called the “ministerial exception” and states that religious schools can hire and fire for mission because its employees are not merely employees but minsters.
So, this professor at Gordon College, a Christian college, claimed to have lost out on a promotion because of her LGBT status. Gordon College said they had every right to do this because her LGBT status flew in the face of their Christian beliefs.
However, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled that the former professor can proceed with her discrimination case against the Christian school because she is not a “minister.”
Gordon College had rightly claimed that all of its employees are “ministerial employees” and thus not covered by anti-discrimination laws. But the unanimous ruling by the seven-member Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said that social work professor Margaret DeWeese-Boyd “was not a minister because she did not teach religion, lead her students in prayer, take students to chapel services, deliver sermons, or perform other duties that the U.S. Supreme Court deemed characteristic of that title,” according to SalemNews.
So here’s the deal. The US Supreme Court said in 2012 that Christian schools can hire and fire for mission because of the ministerial exception. This has come under fire from so many lawsuits, looking to find a way to be able to end it. The Massachusetts Supreme Court may have just given them that opening by saying the court gets to decide who a minister is, and not the school.
So, in effect, Christian and Catholic schools would still nominally have a minsterial exception but the courts would get to decide who a minister is.
DeWeese Boyd’s argument is that her role as a social work professor had absolutely nothing to do with religion. If that is true, that is a shame on Gordon College. One thing all Christian schools should be doing to combat this is to strengthen their Christian or Catholic identity. Ensure that ALL professors begin class with a prayer. Make sure that even though they’re teaching something like “social work” they’re teaching it through a Christian lens.
It will protect the religious schools from litigation but also and a little more importantly, it will lead students to Christ which is kind of the point. Unless it’s not. In which case, let the lawyers have at you.
March 8, 2021 at 11:17 am
Why do you refer to “Christian and Catholic schools” and their “Chistian or Catholic identity”, as though Christianity and Catholicism were mutually exclusive? There are plenty of people who believe that they are, and it does nobody good to enforce that error.
March 9, 2021 at 11:28 am
I will never understand why so-called “professors” insist on their right to teach at a school at odds with their personal beliefs. Boggles my mind.
March 9, 2021 at 11:44 am
I know. Go work elsewhere. But they’re obsessed with destroying the institutions that have standards.
March 10, 2021 at 1:19 pm
I don’t see any links, so when was this Massachusetts case? You mentioned the US Supreme Court’s 2012 case on the “ministerial exception” as applies to an actual minister (as that term is commonly understood), but you fail to mention the two cases last summer where the SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that the “ministerial exception” also applied in two cases brought by lay teachers fired (actually in one case the school just declined to renew contract for following year) against two Catholic schools.
Look up the SCOTUS’ 2020 Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. James School cases. If the Gordon College case is recent, then based on those two SCOTUS cases from last summer, I can’t imagine the Massachusetts’ Court ruling would hold-up (and 7-2 is a landslide in SCOTUS terms for a very broad reading of the “ministerial exception” – and of course the now deceased Bader-Ginsburg was one of those 2 left-wing extremist dissenters).