United States Supreme Court Building, Washington DC, America

It makes a certain amount of common sense; a religious organization ought to have the freedom to make sure that all its staff are on the same faith page. But the Supreme Court just took this argument much, much further.

In 2012 the court issued a decision onHosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and Schoolv.Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that cemented the ministerial exception, the principle that religious organizations should be exempt from the usual anti-discrimination laws when it came to their employees involved in ministry. The case didnt provide a clear guide to exactly which employees counted as ministers, but thanks to the Supreme Courts new decision, we know that teachers at religious schools come under that umbrella.

The court lumped two cases togetherOur Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrisey-Berru, and Kristen Biel v. St. James Schoolto address this very issue. This has been touted as a First Amendment case, based on both the free expression clause and the establishment clause. Basically, the idea is that the government should not be able to tell a religious school how to run its business.

The court found against the fired teachers at the center of both cases, holding that ministerial exception applied to anyone who teach faith to students, even if they have neither the training or title involved in doing so.

One may argue that this all makes sensewhy would a Catholic School want to hire a Muslim or atheist teacher, and why would those teachers want to work at a private Christian school in the first place? Shouldnt a religious school be able to keep a staff of believers?

But the decision goes far beyond that question. Groups like the American Center for Law and Justice have been applauding the decision as a win for religious freedom, but they havent been very vocal about the actual content of the cases.

That may be because neither has anything to do with the fired teachers faith. Morrissey-Bellu sued her school alleging age biasbeing fired for being too old. Biels case is also disturbing. She alleges that she was fired after telling administration that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would have to take time off for treatment. She was told that having two teachers in the year would be too confusing for the students.

The Supreme Court didnt take a position on whether or not the alleged discrimination had actually occurred; their ruling is essentially that even if discrimination (discrimination that would be illegal in any other work setting) actually occurred, it was none of the courts business. As Justice Alito wrote for the 7-2 majority:

The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission

Discrimination in private religious schools is nothing new. Investigations found many Florida private schools exercising anti-LGBTQ policies, and the Catholic church has more than once fired teachers for being gay.

This ruling throws the doors wide open. A private religious school need only assign every teacher something like a ten-minute devotional duty as part of the day, and that teacher now falls under the ministerial exception. The school may fire that teacher at any time, for any reason, and that teacher will have no legal recourse. This may be called a win for religious school First Amendment rights, but the First Amendment rights of their teachers have just been clobbered.

The capper here is that in some states, those private religious schools are able to accept students paid for with vouchers, meaning that taxpayers foot the bill for schools that are able to freely discriminate in ways the taxpayer might find objectionable. Private religious schools have often resisted taking taxpayer dollars because of fears that government money comes with government strings attached; slowly but surely, the Supreme Court is cutting those strings, and with them, any sort of accountability to taxpayers themselves.

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SCOTUS Gives Private Religious Schools The Okay To Discriminate Freely - Forbes