A major victory for religious liberty did occur on January 11: The US Supreme Court sharply rebuked President Obama, his Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and his Department of Justice by ruling 9-0 that ministers of churches cannot sue them for employment discrimination. This decision affirms the broad legal principle that, under the US Constitution, governments have no authority over churches’ doctrines, rules, practices, and overall institutional autonomy.
As our editor, David Manly, pointed out in the last issue in his analysis of the then-pending case, Deputy Solicitor General Leondra Kruger shocked even the Supreme Court’s most secularist members by arguing that the Obama administration does not “see that line of church autonomy principles in the [Constitution’s] religion clause jurisprudence as such”. As David noted, had that extreme pro-statist stance been upheld, it would have led to lawsuits to try to force the Catholic Church to ordain women. The case is Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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