Supreme Court rejects Obama administration arguments in 'most important' religious freedom case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court decided against the Obama administration today on what many have called the most important religious freedom case in decades. The case pitted the rights of religious organizations to choose their own ministers against the government's interest in preventing discrimination in the workplace. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Supreme Court unanimously acknowledged the existence of a "ministerial exception" that bans the government from interfering with religious organizations' right to choose their own ministers.

The court rejected what Chief Justice John Roberts called the "extreme position" of the EEOC to limit the ministerial exception to only those employees who are engaged in "exclusively religious functions." Although lower federal courts had recognized the ministerial exception for four decades, this is the first time the Supreme Court has addressed the issue.

The decision has impact on practically every religious organization in America -- addressing questions related to religious freedom and the self-governance of churches as well as defining the reach of employment discrimination claims against religious employers.

UNANIMOUS

Hannah Clayson Smith, is senior counsel at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which, along with Professor Douglas Laycock at the University of Virginia Law School, successfully represented the Hosanna-Tabor church and school in this case. "You saw a unanimous Supreme Court saying that the government has no business interfering with who a church chooses to be its minister," Smith said. "It rejected the administration's view of churches as inherently discriminatory. Basically the administration's position was 'We can't trust these churches to not discriminate.'"

"I was surprised that the decision was unanimous," said Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University. "The fact that not even the most liberal justices on the court regarded that position as tenable just shows you how wildly out of bounds the Obama administration's position was."