Blog from the Capital

How Appealing links to a 2nd Circuit decision that affirming a lower court's application of the "ministerial exception" to anti-discrimination laws. The case involved a priest's claim that his lack of promotion and ultimate firing were racially motivated. Here is a snippet from the decision (citations and parenth. removed):

[T]he ministerial exception cannot be ascribed solely to judicial self-abnegation. It is also required by the Constitution. This must be so because the presumptively appropriate remedy in a Title VII action is reinstatement but it would surely be unconstitutional under the First Amendment to order the Catholic Church to reinstate, for example, a priest whose employment the Church had terminated on account of his excommunication based on a violation of core Catholic doctrine.
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Wherever its doctrinal roots may lie, the “ministerial exception” is well entrenched; it has been applied by circuit courts across the country for the past thirty-five years.
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Presented with this occasion to formally adopt the ministerial exception, we affirm the vitality of that doctrine in the Second Circuit. In our view, the ministerial exception is constitutionally required by various doctrinal underpinnings of the First Amendment. The Free Exercise Clause protects a “church’s right to decide matters of governance and internal organization.”
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in order to prevail on his Title VII claim, [the plaintiff] must argue that the decision of the Congregatio Pro Clericis was not only erroneous, but also pretextual. Such an argument cannot be heard by us without impermissible entanglement with religious doctrine.
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[H]ow are we, as Article III judges, to gainsay the Congregatio Pro Clericis’ conclusion that Father Justinian is insufficiently devoted to ministry? How are we to assess the quality of his homilies?