The United States Supreme Court on or about May 11, 2020 heard argument in two cases appealed from the United States Court of Appeals from the 9th Circuit (the west coast states) in which two particular school teachers at church schools were held not to be sufficiently ministerial to be barred from making federal law based employment claims. The scope of the Ministerial Exception to employment law claims has been litigated since the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC, 565 US 171 (2012). In that case, the Supreme Court held that the teacher in question was also a minister which triggered the Ministerial Exception and barred her claims.
In Gregory Tucker v Faith Bible Chapel, Order on Motion for Summary Judgment (D. Colo, 2020) the federal trial court converted a Motion to Dismiss to a Motion for Summary Judgment because the motion appended three documents, two of which were the employment contract and the teacher handbook. The employment contract appointed the Plaintiff as “Chaplain” in addition to duties as a science teacher. The Plaintiff was allowed to chose among three proposed titles for the new duty, among which was “Chaplain,” but chose “Director of Student Life.” The Plaintiff claimed that title sounded the least religious as the motive for selecting it. The teacher handbook required teaching from a “Christian worldview” but Plaintiff claimed the school did not define it or provide training in a required curriculum. The Plaintiff claimed that the lack of specificity in theological content, and the explicit prohibition of promoting a single “Christian perspective over another” meant that the position was not religious and therefore, not ministerial. The trial court overruled the Motion for Summary Judgment and the case will proceed to discovery, and possibly trial.
Church schools of non-denominational churches have difficulty in secular courts because the idea of the Bible as the sole source of religious perspective is not understood as “specific” but is pejoratively assumed to be amorphous. Church schools of non-denominational churches that do not substantively document their religious perspective will be deemed to be without one. In the age of the internet and “distance learning,” this seems especially difficult to the secular court to understand. Just as teachers in public schools are required to have “professional development” time, so too should teachers in church schools. The difference is the “development training” of a church school teacher should include a substantive and identifiable religious component. For a position like “Director of Student Life,” it should also include substantive religious counseling training. While the local church owning a church school may not have the resources to provide it all inhouse, there are numerous Bible colleges that would provide the resource.
Church Litigation Update 