Showing 2 posts in Ministerial Exception.

Spiritual Director Doesn't have a Prayer when it Comes to her Discrimination and Termination Claims

Religious employers can rejoice once again, as yet another court upholds the ministerial exception and dismisses an employee's discrimination and termination claims.

For those who are not familiar with this defense, the ministerial exception basically says that the government cannot step in and second-guess a religious entity's decision to hire and fire its ministerial employees. Doing so would potentially violate the First Amendment and would run afoul of the separation of church and state. This means that ministerial employees of religious employers cannot sue for things like discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or termination, because that would be asking the court, in essence, to decide whether the religious employer was right in doing what it did. More ›

Title VII "Ministerial Exception" Does Not Apply to Technology Teacher in Catholic School

A federal district court in Ohio has found that Title VII's "ministerial exception" does not apply to a non-Catholic technology teacher at a Catholic school. The Ohio case, Dias v. Archdiocese of Cincinnati, et al., was one of the first to analyze the ministerial exception following the U.S. Supreme Court's January 2012 ruling that the exception applied to a teacher at a Lutheran school in Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. More ›