Ten years ago, in Hosanna-Tabor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses prohibit the state from interfering with the decisions of religious organizations with respect to the employment of “ministers.” In two more recent cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School and Biel, the Court returned to the question of which employees, exactly, qualify as ministers, but did not announce a clear test. The debate about how far the exception extends thus seems certain to continue. A forthcoming book from Routledge, The Church and Employment Law, by John Duddington (Cardiff), considers the question and takes a comparative approach to the subject. The book is the latest in the valuable ICLARS Series on Law and Religion. Here is the description from Routledge:

This book examines the current law on the employment status of ministers of religion and suggests reforms in this area of the law to meet the need for ministers to be given a degree of employment protection. The work considers the constant theme in Christian history that the clergy should not be subject to the ordinary courts and asks whether this is justified with the growth of areas such as employment law. The work questions whether it is possible to arrive at a satisfactory definition of who is a minister of religion and, along with this, who would be the employer of the minister if there was a contract of employment. Taking a comparative perspective, it evaluates the case law on the employment status of Christian and non-Christian clergy and assesses whether this shows any coherent theme or line of development. The work also considers the issue of ministerial employment status against the background of the autonomy of churches and other religious bodies from the State, together with their ecclesiology.  The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and religion, employment law and religious studies, together with both legal practitioners and human resources practitioners in these areas.