Michigan case puts church v. state before the U.S. Supreme Court - Think Atheist

Michigan case puts church v. state before the U.S. Supreme Court - Think Atheist

This is going to the Supreme Court. The issue involves someone who served as a "called" teacher for an Evangelical Lutheran school. The issue boils down to whether a called teacher is a minister and whether the ministerial exemption to anti-discrimination legislation is valid. Religious institutions have a right to freely practice their religion, which has included the right to discriminate against women, for example.

Six of the nine Supreme Court justices happen to be Roman Catholic. They routinely discriminate against women for the priesthood. It is difficult to imagine that they would rule that the ministerial exemption was completely invalid. It is possible, though I think unlikely, that they will say that it doesn't apply to this case.  She was officially a minister.  The church has a valid case that her actions were inconsistent with the doctrines of the church.  She threatened to sue, and there is a biblical principle that Christians should handle their disputes within the church rather than suing each other.  The Church may well have felt that by acting this way she was showing that she could no longer serve as a minister.

Though most of her duties could be described as secular isn't really a valid point in my opinion.  Many things that ministers do as part of their jobs fall into this category.  Part of what ministers do is to serve their congregation.  If a church had to divide these task into two categories one religious one not, and then determine whether the bulk of what the minister did was religious in order to determine whether the minister was really a minister for the purpose of the law, this would put quite a burden on the church.

Some lawyers arguing against the church claim that if the ministerial exception is upheld that this will mean that if a minister is raped or a church decides not to pay the minister, that the minister can then be fired if they take the issue to court.  I don't think this is the case.

With rape the charge would be criminal, and so it would be the state that was the plaintiff, not the victim.  Unless the church had a doctrine that would prevent the victim from saying that he or she was raped, this wouldn't even be an issue.  A victim can be compelled to testify in court in a criminal case, since the act is technically against the state and not just against an individual.  I also suspect that the interest that the state has in prosecuting rapists would have a different legal standing than the interest that it had in preventing discrimination of this sort.

As for the other situation, I think that if someone doesn't pay you, you usually stop working for them.  I haven't heard of cases where someone complained about being fired over such a dispute.