The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., is expected to rule on the employment discrimination cases by this summer.
Photo: will dunham/ReutersWASHINGTON—The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it was struggling over how much freedom to give religious institutions from laws barring employment discrimination.
The justices spent more than 90 minutes considering a pair of cases involving Catholic schools to decide whether lay teachers can bring discrimination claims based on age or disability.
The court eight years ago allowed religious groups to make hiring and firing decisions about their faith leaders without government interference. The new cases present the court with questions about what types of jobs are essential to a religious group’s mission—and thus off-limits for discrimination claims.
Justices across the ideological spectrum suggested that clear rules could prove elusive, even in the teacher context, because it isn’t so easy for a court to determine which jobs involve central religious functions and which don’t.
Justice Samuel Alito asked whether it should make a difference if the position involved teaching only religion or other subjects, too. Justice Elena Kagan wondered about a math teacher instructed to embody Jewish values in the classroom, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised a hypothetical English teacher “who sprinkles in references to Matthew 25 and feed the hungry.”
“I am perplexed as to what you do, for example, with the chemistry teacher who starts class with a Hail Mary,” Justice Clarence Thomas said.
Before the court were two lawsuits alleging discrimination, both involving Catholic schools in California. One is the St. James School in Torrance, where fifth-grade teacher Kristen Biel alleged unlawful termination because her contract was not renewed in 2014 after she informed the school she had breast cancer and would need time away. The school said it had concerns about Ms. Biel’s classroom management. She died in 2019; her husband has continued the case.
The late Kristen Biel celebrating her graduation in 2009 with her husband, Darryl, and their two children, Dylan and Delaney.
Photo: Biel family/Associated PressThe other focused on age-discrimination claims by teacher Agnes Deirdre Morrissey-Berru, who alleges that Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Hermosa Beach first demoted her to part-time status and then ended her employment after she declined to retire. The school said it wasn’t satisfied with Ms. Morrissey-Berru’s implementation of school reforms.
A federal appeals court in both cases allowed the teachers to sue; the Supreme Court is considering appeals by the schools.
The cases are a follow-up to the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, where the court recognized a “ministerial exception” to antidiscrimination laws and ruled that such an exception wasn’t limited to just the head of a religious congregation. The court, however, declined in that case to offer categorical rules on what kinds of employees were covered.
Eric Rassbach, a lawyer representing the schools, on Monday argued that if the separation of church and state means anything, it must mean that judges, juries and other government officials can’t dictate who teaches in religious-affiliated schools.
“Indeed, that is one of the most important religious functions for any religious community, passing the faith on to the next generation,” Mr. Rassbach said.
The Trump administration argued in support of that position. Justice Department lawyer Morgan Ratner, representing the administration, said what matters is whether an employee performs important religious functions. “Those teachers are ministering to the students by teaching them how and why to be Catholic,” Ms. Ratner said.
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Jeffrey Fisher, a lawyer representing the teachers, said the schools were making arguments that were far too broad and would remove important employment protections for 300,000 lay teachers in religious schools, and potentially tens of thousands of others, including nurses who work in religiously affiliated institutions.
Mr. Fisher said the exception to discrimination laws should apply only to religious leaders, not employees who merely do things like lead prayers.
“If prayer and worship were enough, then you’d have not just the football coach or the administrator who gives the morning prayer over the loudspeaker in school, but you’d have the nurses in Catholic hospitals, you’d have the teenagers at summer camps who are camp counselors who lead their campers in a prayer every night,” he said.
To illustrate the potential difficulties in this area, Justice Kagan ran through a range of jobs outside of the teaching profession, including employees at church-affiliated soup kitchens or rehab clinics, or cooks who make kosher meals at Jewish schools. “What are we supposed to draw from this?” she asked.
Justices also voiced discomfort at becoming entangled with having to decide which positions are sufficiently religious in nature that churches and religious organizations deserve freedom to hire and fire at will.
Justice Alito sought to keep the focus on the issue of teachers in religious schools, saying their jobs were central to teaching faith to new generations.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the breadth of the exception sought by the schools was staggering. “Having cancer has nothing to do with the performance of her religious functions,” Justice Ginsburg, a four-time cancer survivor, said of Ms. Biel.
A decision is expected by this summer.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
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