June 21, 2011 – New York – AJC is urging the United States Supreme Court to adopt a holistic, functional test for determining which employees of religious entities should be considered “ministerial” for purposes of what has become known as the “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws.

The case is Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, et al.  AJC filed an amicus brief jointly with the Union for Reform Judaism.

The “ministerial exception” safeguards the right of religious institutions to select their clergy free from government interference by exempting the institutions from federal and state employment discrimination lawsuits brought by ministerial employees. 

“AJC believes that those employees for whom religious duties represent a qualitatively significant and integral function of their jobs should be deemed ‘ministerial’ for purposes of applying the exception,” states AJC.

The Supreme Court will consider what test should apply to determine who is a “ministerial” employee?  An earlier ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that a fourth grade teacher in a Lutheran elementary school was not “ministerial” based on a quantitative analysis of how many minutes per day the teacher spent on activities deemed “religious.”

“A court’s determination that an employee of a religious institution is not a member of its clergy based on arbitrary factors such as the comparative quantity of time spent on activities the court deems ‘religious’ severely curtails” the religious liberty of that institution, states AJC.

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