Religious Groups Greet Ruling With Satisfaction

[rug]

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
Published: January 11, 2012

Among the more or less predictable reactions from legal adversaries to the Supreme Court’s finding that ministers may not bring employment discrimination suits against their churches, there is a pious sentiment to be found here and there — an appeal to an even higher law.

Even those who agreed with the unanimous court — and who have argued all along that the First Amendment provides an exception that lets churches, synagogues and other religious institutions hire and fire ministers and other religious leaders without government interference — can be heard cautioning the churches not to abuse that right.

Writing on the Web site of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which had filed a brief urging the court to affirm the ministerial exception, Don Byrd, a blogger who teaches at a Christian university, said, “This particular case though can be a difficult one to think about for those of us who stand firmly against employment discrimination.”

Mr. Byrd, a music theory teacher at Belmont University in Nashville, said in an interview that he had found misgivings among fellow faculty members over the perception that religious liberty might be used to cloak discrimination.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/us/hosanna-tabor-ruling-welcomed-by-religious-groups.html

[Angry Dragon]

1. I think there might be huge abuses of this ruling..........

There are some religious colleges that claim all their teachers are minsters
so they can get better tax preferences
what is to stop some colleges and churches to expand this practice

[deacon_sephiroth]

2. they should

Screw it! I mean, if we're going to play favorite for some religions, why not others? I'm an ordained minister myself, and anyone can be in < 5 minutes. other colleges should do the same, lampoon the prefrences of the system, occupy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. They fired a woman because she got ill

It's amazing that this whole NYT piece can go on about whether this ruling might mean that "religious liberty might be used to cloak discrimination", when it specifically was about cloaking discrimination.

In June 2004, before the next term opened, she suddenly became ill and was hospitalized. She ultimately was diagnosed with narcolepsy, and took a leave for the following school year. In January 2005, she told the school she would be cleared to return to work in February. The school, however, decided that her health would not permit her return, and a replacement was hired to teach third and fourth grades. School officials then decided it would be best if she resigned. Ultimately, Perich and school leaders came into sharp conflict, when she threatened to sue, claiming that the refusal to retain her was based on her illness, and thus the school would be charged with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. When she tried to return to school, she was fired; she was told that she was let go because of her threat to sue, which violated a Lutheran religious tenet that members of the faith should resolve internally their disagreements.

She filed charges with EEOC, claiming retaliation under the ADA. The EEOC wound up suing the school, and Perich joined in the lawsuit. A District Court ruled that her claim was barred by the “ministerial exception” to federal workplace discrimination law. The Sixth Circuit Court, however, while recognizing (as have all federal Circuit Courts) that there was such an exception, ruled that Perich could not be treated as a “minister” under that exception because her duties were not primarily involved in the teaching of the faith, and that she had no role in spreading the faith or in church government.

http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=136532

(on a side note, "she was told that she was let go because of her threat to sue" is an obvious lie by the church, since they'd already told her to resign. A shame to see a church start off discriminating by breaking one of its commandments).

The idiot Notre Dame law professor who says "governments are not permitted to resolve essentially religious disputes and questions" has not realised that whether someone's illness should force them to resign is not "essentially religious". I had assumed, from the little I had heard about this case, that it was about some religious difference. It's not - it's about the church trying to get rid of an employee who got ill.

I'll let Fred Clark sum up:

It’s a bad school. It’s a very bad school and no parent should consider sending their children there.

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School teaches children bad things. It teaches children wrong things and untrue things. It does not provide a decent education. It’s a bad school.

I’m not referring here to the school’s formal curriculum, which for all I know is perfectly sufficient. But apart from that curriculum, the school also teaches its students reprehensible things about fairness, decency, the Golden Rule and how humans ought to behave to other humans when they get sick.

And the school is teaching these things so emphatically that it was willing to fight for them in court.
...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/01/14/hosanna-tabor-evangelical-lutheran-school-is-a-very-bad-school/

It's amazing this church thinks that it has the moral right to remove the normal non-religious rights from employees that normal Americans have.