Surprising unanimity

“The church must be free to choose who will guide it on its way.”

— Chief Jus­tice John Roberts

“When it comes to the expres­sion and incul­ca­tion of reli­gious doc­trine, there can be no doubt that the mes­sen­ger matters.”

— Jus­tice Samuel Alito

Church schools can be found in nearly every com­mu­nity in Amer­ica and Red­ford, Mich., is no excep­tion. Along with the many pub­lic schools in the char­ter town­ship of 48,000 peo­ple, the Catholic church runs two schools and the Lutheran church oper­ates a school through the Hosanna-Tabor church.

Teach­ers at the Hosanna-Tabor school are sep­a­rated into two cat­e­gories. Some of the teach­ers have an edu­ca­tional back­ground, but no reli­gious train­ing (and need not even be Luther­ans). These teach­ers, how­ever, are hired only when the school is unable to fill posi­tions with teach­ers who have both edu­ca­tional train­ing and reli­gious train­ing through the Lutheran church. This arrange­ment is legal and per­fectly under­stand­able, as the church seeks to serve mul­ti­ple pur­poses in the train­ing and hir­ing of its teachers.

Those who have dual train­ing are con­sid­ered ‘called’ teach­ers. They may teach reli­gion classes, lead their stu­dents in daily prayer and par­tic­i­pate in or lead chapel ser­vices at the school. They are given the title, “Min­is­ter of Reli­gion, com­mis­sioned.” Other than those duties, the lay and called teach­ers at the school serve sim­i­lar functions.

Approx­i­mately six years ago one of the school’s called teach­ers, Cheryl Perich, devel­oped a phys­i­cal health con­di­tion — nar­colepsy. When the school year started she was unable to work and the school hired a teacher to take her place while she was dis­abled. After Christ­mas she informed the prin­ci­pal of the school that she was ready to come back. The school, how­ever, had signed a full-year con­tract with her replace­ment and told her that she was not ready to return. She came back to the school any­way and insisted that the prin­ci­pal doc­u­ment that she had been there and had attempted to return to work. The church con­gre­ga­tion then rescinded her call and she was ter­mi­nated from her posi­tion at the school.

If Ms. Perich had worked for a pub­lic school she would have been able to pur­sue a legal claim that she had been ter­mi­nated with­out cause, refused rein­state­ment under var­i­ous fed­eral pro­vi­sions that pro­tect dis­abled work­ers and made a claim for back pay, legal expenses and future lost com­pen­sa­tion. This week, the Supreme Court of the United States was faced with the ques­tion of whether her sta­tus as a “min­is­ter” barred her from mak­ing these claims.

This was a busy week for the Court. To this point in the term it had issued only six deci­sions (deci­sions usu­ally come late in the term) and nearly all of them had been unan­i­mous. There is a wide­spread per­cep­tion that the High Court’s deci­sions are all con­tentious 5–4 rul­ings that split along ide­o­log­i­cal lines but those cases are by far the excep­tion rather than the rule. When those deeply divided deci­sions come along, how­ever, they often arise on hot-button social issues like abor­tion, gun rights and reli­gion. It would not have been sur­pris­ing, then, if this case was decided by a nar­row major­ity of the Court.

Instead, the court issued a unan­i­mous deci­sion in this mat­ter. Even where there was a sep­a­rate con­cur­ring opin­ion, by Jus­tice Alito who is one of the Court’s most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers, it was joined by Jus­tice Kagan who is one of the Court’s most lib­eral members.

The Court con­cluded that there has long been a ‘min­is­te­r­ial excep­tion’ to fed­eral laws. Since Perich was more than just a lay teacher, but had reli­gious train­ing, had the title of “min­is­ter of reli­gion, com­mis­sioned” and edu­cated church mem­bers (her stu­dents) in reli­gious mat­ters, she clearly qual­i­fied as a min­is­ter. Chief Jus­tice John Roberts cited a let­ter from then Sec­re­tary of State James Madi­son to Catholic Bishop John Car­roll declin­ing an 1806 invi­ta­tion to Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son to have a say in who should run the church’s affairs in Amer­ica to show the long-standing nature of Amer­i­can pol­icy on the sub­ject. He con­cluded, “the pur­pose of the excep­tion is not to safe­guard a church’s deci­sion to fire a min­is­ter only when it is made for a reli­gious rea­son. The excep­tion instead ensures that the author­ity to select and con­trol who will min­is­ter to the faith­ful — a mat­ter strictly eccle­siastical — is the church’s alone.”

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Jan 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.