Federal Appeals Court Emphasizes Scope of Ministerial Exception

The Ninth Circuit recently reaffirmed the broad scope of the judicially-created ministerial exemption by upholding a lower court’s decision in Behrend v. San Francisco Zen Center, Inc. dismissing a former employee’s disability discrimination case against the Zen Center. Title VII allows religious employers to discriminate on the basis of religion in their hiring decisions, but the ministerial exemption goes much further and allows religious employers to avoid the application of all anti-discrimination provisions to their decisions about the hiring, firing, compensation, and other terms and conditions of employment of their “ministers.” This exemption is grounded in the First Amendment’s command that the government…