Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Free Exercise by Moonlight

I have a new article in draft called Free Exercise by Moonlight. It is about the current condition of permissive religious accommodation. It is pervasively lugubrious. Here is the abstract:

How is the current condition of religious free exercise, and religious accommodation in specific, best understood? What is the relationship of the two most important free exercise cases of the past half-century, Employment Division v. Smith and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC? This essay explores four possible answers to these questions.

  1. Smith and Hosanna-Tabor are the twin suns of religious accommodation under the Constitution. They are distinctively powerful approaches.
  2. Hosanna-Tabor’s approach to constitutional free exercise is now more powerful than Smith’s. Smith has been eclipsed.
  3. Hosanna-Tabor has shown itself to be feeble. It has been eclipsed by Smith.
  4. Smith augured the waning of religious accommodation, which proceeds apace. Hosanna-Tabor does little to change that.

In describing these possibilities, the essay considers the cases themselves, various doctrinal developments (focusing on subsequent Supreme Court cases as well as lower court decisions interpreting Hosanna-Tabor), and the broader political and social context in which claims for religious accommodation are now received. It concludes that though each possibility has persuasive points (perhaps with the exception of the second), the last is most accurate.

Smith’s approach to free exercise continues to control for constitutional purposes and is, for more general political purposes, more entrenched than ever. Its admonition about fabulously remote threats of anarchy in a world where each “conscience is a law unto itself” has ironically become more apt as a warning against the multiplying number of secular interests argued to be legally cognizable than against religious accommodation run amok. There is no clearer manifestation of these developments than the recent emergence of theories maintaining that new dignitary and other third party harms resulting from religious accommodation ought to defeat religious freedom claims. These theories reflect the swollen ambit of state authority and defend surprising understandings of the limits of religious accommodation—understandings that pose grave threats to the American political tradition of providing generous religious exemptions from general laws. The ministerial exception simply represents the refracted glow of constitutional protection in the gathering gloom. It is free exercise by moonlight.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Robinson on Religious Institutions

Zoe Robinson (DePaul) has posted a new piece, What is a Religious Institution?, on SSRN. The abstract follows:

Change in the First Amendment landscape tends towards the incremental, but the Supreme Court’s opinion two terms ago in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC — holding that religious institutions enjoy a range of First Amendment protections that do not extend to other individuals or organizations — is better understood as a jurisprudential earthquake. The suddenness and scale of the shift helps to explain the turmoil that has ensued in the lower courts and law journals. And yet, it could be that the biggest aftershock has yet to be felt. The Court left open the most important functional question that exists in scenarios where there will be constitutional winners and losers: what, or who, is a ‘religious institution’ for First Amendment purposes?

The lower federal courts have begun to grapple with the question, but no satisfactory approach exists. Drawing on the historical sources and values animating Hosanna-Tabor and its Religion Clause predecessors, this Article provides a workable framework for distinguishing between those institutions that fall within the scope of the religious institutions category and those that do not. The framework proposed here proceeds from a purposive analysis that turns on which institutions will most often and most effectively use the newly identified and exclusive protections to benefit society as a whole. To this end, the framework favors institutions that have as their purpose (1) protection of individual conscience; (2) protection of group rights; and (3) provision of desirable societal structures.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Conversations: Marc DeGirolami

This summer, Harvard University Press published The Tragedy of Religious Freedom, by our very own Marc DeGirolami (left), CLR’s Associate Director. In the book, Marc argues for a “tragic” understanding of religious freedom, one “that avoids the twin dangers of reliance on reductive and systematic justifications, on the one hand, and thoroughgoing skepticism about the possibility of theorizing, on the other.” This week, Marc answers some questions about his book. Among other things, he discusses the differences between “tragic” and “comic” legal theories; the value of history and tradition in judicial decision-making; and the inevitability of judicial discretion. He also explains why the Court got religious freedom wrong in Employment Division v. Smith and right in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. 

CLR Forum: Marc, explain what you mean by “comic” and “tragic” approaches to law generally. Why do you think religious freedom, in particular, should be addressed from a tragic perspective?

DeGirolami: The terms comic and tragic are ancient and have been used in classical, literary, and philosophical settings. I draw on some of these meanings in the book, but I use comic in the legal context to mean two things: (1) a preference for systematic ordering of the law by reducing legal values either to one or to a small set, in the belief that human society is progressively improved by that reduction; and (2) the marginalization of the loss of other values in the process of accomplishing (1). Tragic approaches to the law resist both of these points. A tragic approach to law says that the reasons we value a practice like religious freedom are plural and cannot be reduced. Each value struggles to avoid absorption and subordination by the others. The clash of values results both from the limits of human reasoning and from the conflict of human interests and aspirations. So in the face of conflict in law, a tragic approach affirms that the comic impulse to reduce legal values, and systematically to marginalize those that are subordinated, will exacerbate conflict and end up deforming, and perhaps eventually destroying, important social practices and institutions.

CLR Forum: You single out Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia’s famous opinion in the peyote case, as an example of the misguided “comic” approach and argue that it should be gradually dismantled. What’s so wrong with Smith? And why not just overrule it? 

DeGirolami: Yes, I am critical of Smith and believe it to be an example of a comic approach. Smith reduced all possible values of free exercise under the Constitution to a single value: formal neutrality. A neutral rule that is applied generally no longer can violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution after Smith, no matter how severely the rule burdens the religious free exercise of an individual or a group and no matter how insubstantial the government’s interest in enforcing the rule on a religious claimant. The Smith decision attempted to accomplish both of the comic points I listed above. It wanted to bring system Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

UK Supreme Court Decides Important Ministerial Employment Case

Yesterday, the UK’s Supreme Court decided an important ministerial employment case, President of the Methodist Conference v. Preston. In many respects, Preston tracks the US Supreme Court’s recent ministerial exception case, Hosanna-Tabor, though the British case does not refer to Hosanna-Tabor and doesn’t explicitly address church autonomy concerns.

In Preston, a Methodist minister sought relief under UK employment law for unfair dismissal. The question turned on whether Preston was an “employee” for purposes of the law, which, in turn, depended on whether she worked for the church under a “contract of employment.”  By a 4-1 vote, the Supreme Court held that she did not.

In the past, Lord Sumption’s opinion explained, UK cases drew a bright line between clergy, who were understood to hold offices of an essentially spiritual nature, and mere employees. But these rulings depended on “social instincts” that do not obtain in today’s more “secular and regulated context.” Today, the question turns on the precise terms that govern a minister’s employment. In other words, the UK courts must apply what Americans would recognize as a “neutral principles of law” approach. Courts must look at the terms of a minister’s employment in light of the surrounding circumstances to see what the parties reasonably intended.

Here, Lord Sumption wrote, the context made plain that Methodist ministers like Preston are not contractual employees. Preston had no contract with the church; her employment was governed completely by the church’s constitution. Her ordination, conferred by the laying on of hands, was understood to be a lifelong covenant. Her stipend was not seen as consideration for her work, but as a subsidy to allow her to serve the Lord. In short, by its terms, ministry in the Methodist Church was “a vocation, by which candidates submit themselves to the discipline of the church for life.” No special circumstances in Preston’s case altered this conclusion.

In its insistence on looking to the particular circumstances of a plaintiff’s employment, Preston echoes the flexible approach to the definition of minister that one sees in Hosanna-Tabor. Unlike the American court, though, the British court didn’t much address the underlying church autonomy values that ministerial exceptions serve. In large part, this reticence results from the different texts the courts were construing. Preston is a straightforward statutory question without constitutional implications; Hosanna-Tabor, by contrast, depends on an understanding of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment.

(H/t: Law & Religion UK).

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Glickstein on the Ministerial Exception

Jed Glickstein (Yale Law School) has posted Should the Ministerial Exception Apply to Functions, Not Persons? The abstract follows.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the Supreme Court confirmed what the lower courts had been saying for some time: the First Amendment prohibits the application of the employment discrimination laws to the relationship between a church and its ministers. Despite Hosanna-Tabor’s significance, however, the so- called ministerial exception remains in flux. For one thing, it is still unclear who will be deemed a “minister” for purposes of the doctrine. The answer to that foundational question may be more complicated than it appears. Thus far, courts and commentators have assumed that ministerial status is binary; a given employee either is a minister (in which case the First Amendment completely bars her suit) or she is not (in which case her suit proceeds like any other). That way of thinking may make sense for the easy cases, but it fits uneasily with the wide range of positions that have been labeled ministerial by the lower courts. This Note accordingly suggests an alternative framework that more closely tracks the functional considerations that underlie the ministerial exception. In short, it argues that a revised exception — one that applies to ministerial functions, not ministerial persons — better strikes the balance between antidiscrimination values and religious liberty that the First Amendment requires.

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Hurst on Hosanna-Tabor and Separationism

Alan Hurst (BYU – J. Reuben Clark Law School) has posted Hosanna-Tabor and the Exaggerated Decline of Separationism. The abstract follows.

Scholars generally agree that the separation of church and state, as an approach to the Religion Clauses, has been in decline for decades. Yet the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School v. EEOC is strongly and unanimously separationist, and none of scholars’ explanations for separationism’s decline adequately explain Hosanna-Tabor.

I argue that previous scholarship fails to explain Hosanna-Tabor because it has been insufficiently attentive to what “separationism” means and the ways in which separationist approaches to the Religion Clauses can differ from each other. It has therefore failed to appreciate the ways in which the Supreme Court’s separationist principles have evolved rather than being repudiated, in particular the Court’s increased willingness to see free private choice as an adequate buffer between church and state and the Court’s increasingly narrow understanding of what counts as religion for separationist purposes.

These evolving aspects of the Court’s approach to separationism help make sense of Hosanna-Tabor, in which free private choice was not an issue and the church’s interests at stake were clearly part of the religious sphere. Further, they lead to a few predictions about the future of separationism and recommendations for pro-separationist scholars and activists.

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Hatzis on Anti-Discrimination Law and Clergy in the U.K.

Nicholas Hatzis (University of Oxford) has posted The Church-Clergy Relationship and Anti-Discrimination Law. The abstract follows.

Should antidiscrimination norms apply to the relationship between a religious group and its clergy? In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v EEOC the US Supreme Court affirmed the existence of a “ministerial exception” which bars discrimination claims by ministers of religion against their church. In 2005 the House of Lords had reached the opposite conclusion, ruling, in Percy v Board of National Mission of the Church of Scotland, that the decision to dismiss an ordained minister was not a spiritual matter falling outside the scope of secular law. This article examines the constitutional foundations of the ministerial exception, argues that Percy ignored important aspects of church autonomy and suggests that courts should consider creating a narrowly tailored rule exempting decisions to appoint or remove clergy from the scope of anti-discrimination law.

 

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Strasser on Hosanna-Tabor, the Ministerial Exception, and the Constitution

Mark Strasser (Capital University Law School) has posted Making the Anomalous Even More Anomalous: On Hosanna-Tabor, the Ministerial Exception, and the Constitution. The abstract follows.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Court held that the First Amendment incorporates the ministerial exception and, further, found that the plaintiff fell within that exception and so could not press her claim. However, courts and commentators hoping for clarification of Religion Clauses jurisprudence more generally or even for a firm constitutional grounding of the ministerial exception may well be disappointed. The Court has raised more questions than it has answered, and has provided such little helpful guidance to the lower courts that Hosanna-Tabor is likely to lead to greater confusion in the lower courts and to greater inconsistency in the judgments issued when religious employees have allegedly been subjected to prohibited discriminatory practices. Further, by mischaracterizing the past jurisprudence, the Hosanna-Tabor Court has muddled what was previously fairly clear, and thus will not only have put a wide range of religious employees at risk but will have made the Religion Clauses jurisprudence more generally even less understandable.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 3 Comments

Is Conservative Judaism a Cartel?

CLR Forum reader John McGinnis points out an interesting article in the New York Times this weekend, about Duke Law Professor Barak Richman’s quest to have the courts declare Conservative Judaism’s rules for naming rabbis a violation of the Sherman Act. It’s not entirely clear from the Times article, but, as I understand it, synagogues that affiliate with Conservative Judaism must select rabbis from lists approved by the Rabbinical Assembly, a membership association of Conservative rabbis.  Richman believes this mechanism makes the Rabbinical Assembly an illegal “cartel” that “harms both the economic welfare and the religious interests of individual congregations.” He argues that the ministerial exception properly applies only to hierarchical religions and employers, not “congregational denominations,” like Conservative Judaism, in which individual congregations, not the central body, employ clergy. You can read his argument in an amicus brief he filed, along with several other antitrust scholars, in the Hosanna-Tabor case.

I don’t know whether this mechanism would violate the Sherman Act in a commercial setting. I’m confident the logic of the ministerial exception applies here, though. From what I can gather, Conservative Judaism is a hybrid polity, not hierarchical but not strictly congregational, either. Authority seems to be shared between the central body, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and local congregations. It hardly seems inappropriate to require local congregations that affiliate with the central body to choose clergy the central body approves; otherwise, the central body could lose control over the movement’s meaning and message. Although Professor Richman is correct that the rules impinge on individual congregations’ power to choose whomever they wish as clergy, that’s just a consequence of affiliating with the central body. If congregations want total freedom of choice, they can organize outside the Conservative movement and select whomever they wish.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

DC Court of Appeals: Ministerial Exception Does Not Bar Minister’s Breach of Contract Suit Against Church

Here’s a reminder that, even after Hosanna-Tabor, the ministerial exception does not bar all lawsuits clergy bring against church employers. The DC Court of Appeals has allowed a minister’s breach of contract claim against her former congregation to go forward, notwithstanding the congregation’s claim of immunity. The Rev. Deloris Prioleau, an ordained AME pastor, had a series of one-year employment contracts with the Cornerstone AME Church in DC. When Cornerstone failed to pay Prioleau $39,000 it owed her on her final contract, she brought a breach of contract action. Last week, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that the action could proceed under the “neutral principles of law” approach. Prioleau’s suit, the court said, appeared to be “a straightforward contract case, uncomplicated by ecclesiastical considerations.” Moreover, the ministerial exception did not apply. Prioleau had not challenged Cornerstone’s “authority to hire, to fire, or to assign her duties” and did not seek “reinstatement.” (Oddly, the court did not discuss Hosanna-Tabor itself). The court ended its opinion with a warning, however:  “if it becomes apparent … that this dispute does in fact turn on matters of doctrinal interpretation or of church governance, the trial court may grant summary judgment to avoid ‘excessive entanglement with religion.'” The case is Second Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Prioleau, 2012 WL 3243190 (D.C. Court of Appeals, Aug. 9, 2012).