Stephen S. Wise Temple v. Julie Su

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 (2012), this Court— agreeing with every court of appeals and disagreeing with the EEOC—first recognized the existence of a “ministerial exception” in the First Amendment. The Court held that a teacher at a Lutheran school qualified as a minister because of multiple factors, including that she transmitted the faith to the next generation. The Court warned against treating those multiple reinforcing factors as necessary, however, and Justices Alito and Kagan concurred to endorse the “functional approach” that was dominant in the lower courts before Hosanna-Tabor. In this case, a California appellate court squarely rejected that functional approach and held that, under Hosanna-Tabor, teachers at a Jewish preschool do not qualify for the ministerial exception even though they “undeniably play an important role in Temple life” by “transmitting Jewish religion and practice to the next generation.” That holding allows a state agency to proceed with an intrusive six-year-old employment suit against the Temple seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in backpay and penalties, exacerbates an acknowledged split involving eight other federal and state courts, and unduly narrows the ministerial exception by misreading Hosanna-Tabor. The question presented is: Whether courts should apply a functional approach to the ministerial exception that does not punish religious institutions for employing nonadherents to transmit religious precepts to the next generation.