SHJ Joins Supreme Court Amicus Brief Opposing Religious Employers' Right to Discriminatory Hiring Practices

The Society for Humanistic Judaism has joined with the American Humanist Association and other non-theistic organizations in filing an amicus brief in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which will be heard by the US Supreme Court during its fall term. This case raises the issue of whether religious employers should have a special right, a right that non-religious employers do not have, to ignore federal anti-discrimination laws and discriminate on the basis of race, gender, age, or disability if done in connection with an employee deemed "ministerial." The lower federal courts have created this "ministerial" exception to the anti-discrimination laws on the grounds that the First Amendment's Religion Clauses prevent the courts from intervening. The SHJ sided with the EEOC in arguing that religious employers should NOT be allowed to discriminate on these non-religious grounds.

The case concerns core humanist values regarding the equal, fair, and just application of our anti-discrimination laws to all employers, both secular and religious. As amici, we wish "to bolster the principle of religious neutrality: that government may not prefer religion over nonreligion" by asking that the lower court reject the ministerial exception and rule on the merits of the plaintiff's discrimination claim. The brief argues: "A decision of this Court recognizing the ministerial exception would have the constitutionally impermissible effect of denying equal protection of the laws to the employees of religious organizations and of advancing religion by creating special rights for religious defendants, and in so doing undermine the rule of law."