Supreme Court sends clear message on religion

On Jan. 11, the U.S. Supreme Court rang the religious liberty bell loud and clear in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. It unanimously upheld the right of religious organizations to choose their own ministers, in a case between a church school in Michigan and its former employee and a federal government agency.

The Court ruled in favor of the church, adopting the reasoning of its pro bono advocates, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and University of Virginia Law School Professor Douglas Laycock. The Court (in the Chief Justice's unanimous opinion) declared that both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment provide "special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations" and "bar the government from interfering with the decision of a religious group to fire one of its ministers." The protection extends not just to priests and rabbis, but to any leader or teacher who "personifies" the beliefs of the religious community.

In a ringing rebuke of the Obama administration's cramped view of a church's freedom, all nine justices — including both Obama appointees — rejected its arguments as "extreme," "remarkable" and "untenable." The Court rejected the government's two-pronged argument that churches should enjoy no more freedom in choosing their leaders than any other social group, and even if they do, that freedom should be limited only to cases where the employee performed exclusively religious functions, rather than a mix of religious and secular ones.

The Court's rebuke echoes beyond this case to the Obama administration's tone deafness towards religious liberty in other areas. One example is the administration's new rule in August mandating abortion-causing drugs for all employer-provided health insurance plans. The rule will force some religious organizations to choose between honoring their pro-life convictions or providing their own employees with health insurance, which must now include free "preventative services" that encompass Plan B ("the morning after pill") and ella ("the week after pill").

The new rule exempts only those religious employers that primarily serve and employ members of their own faith, and whose purpose is to inculcate religious values. In practice, few religious employers would fit such constricted criteria. A Christian soup kitchen could lose the exemption simply because it feeds Jews, Muslims and atheists. Indeed, not even Jesus' ministry would qualify for the exemption because he fed, taught and ministered to non-Christians.