At the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year, Cheryl Perich, at left, a fourth-grade teacher, was diagnosed with sleeping sickness -- narcolepsy. She was hospitalized and went on disability leave, telling her principal that her doctor expected her to be able to return to full-time work in two-three months. The following month, according to a report by Nina Totenberg on NPR Wednesday, the school changed its health insurance policy, hired another teacher, and eventually suggested that Perich resign. She refused, said that she was ready to report back to work, and showed up for work one day without the school's permission. At this time, she also threatened to sue the school under the Americans with Disability Act. By April, the church rescinded her "call" (she was fired). She then sued under the ADA provision that forbids retaliatory firing.
The issue has gone to the Supreme Court [Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC], which heard the arguments in the case on Wednesday. Cheryl Perich was teaching at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church school, in Redford, Michigan, a parochial school. She had completed courses in religious instruction at a Lutheran university to become tenured, a "called teacher," at the school. The administration of the school considers Perich a minister. The issue before the Court is, as Totenberg writes, "who is a minister and when, if ever, that individual is exempt from the nation's civil rights laws.
The school does not dispute that it fired Perich for threatening to sue. It maintains that she is a minister of the church, and that church doctrine teaches that all such disputes must be resolved internally, within the church.
"It doesn't matter why she was discharged," says the school's lawyer, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock. "What matters is that she was performing ministerial functions, and churches get to decide for themselves who their ministers ought to be."...
Walter Dellinger, Perich's attorney, says that exempting individuals as "ministers" is a "radical proposition" that would exempt from the nation's civil rights laws hundreds of thousands of teachers and administrators, and potentially millions of employees who work not just for schoools for for other organizations with religious affiliations.
Taken to its logical conclusion, Dellinger contends, it would mean that a religious organization could bar its employees from reporting to civil authorities that children are being sexually abused, or that health and safety violations are taking place. "A religious organization has no such constitutional entitlement to become a law unto itself," he argues.
An excellent, objective analysis of the case to this point can be found on the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. An excerpt [emphases ours]:
The case centers on a legal doctrine known as the “ministerial exception.” The Supreme Court has never expressly ruled on the doctrine, but judges in lower federal courts have used it to exempt religious organizations from anti-discrimination laws and other statutes that regulate how employers treat their workers. These decisions have emphasized that courts should not intervene in employment matters when doing so would require them to evaluate the qualifications or performance of employees who carry out religious functions, such as preaching or leading worship. In Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the Supreme Court will decide whether a teacher who devoted part of her day to religious duties should be considered a ministerial employee in a wrongful dismissal suit. More importantly, Hosanna-Tabor offers the court an opportunity to shrink or expand the reach of the ministerial exception, thereby putting its stamp on an important doctrine that has been applied in different ways by lower federal and state courts.
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