Ministerial Exception and Church Autonomy

In its first ministerial exception case post-Hosanna-Tabor, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals holds that a Lay Principal can’t sue her Catholic School for discrimination.

If you have employees who may be ministers, you need to take practical steps to define their role. Here are some suggestions on how to clarify who is a minister.

Not everything a church does to a pastor is outside the reach of the court. That is a recent lesson church officials learned in a case out of Ohio federal court dealing with the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. Also known as the church autonomy doctrine, this is the principle that civil courts will stay out of the doctrinal and important decisions a church makes, such as the decision to fire a pastor or remove a parishioner from membership.

Defamation claims against religious organizations are more common than you would think. It’s almost impossible to challenge who a religious organization selects as a minister or how it disciplines that minister. So these claims focus on the idea that what was said about the minister is defamatory—something that is not directly controlled by constitutional law. Here is a recent example of a case that ultimately had an indirect constitutional defense.

A discussion between Theresa Lynn Sidebotham, Esq. and Dr. Brent Lindquist about ministerial exception and missions.