Written by Don Byrd
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday became one of the first to try and apply the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Hosanna-Tabor, which affirmed the ministerial exception that allows religious employers the discretion to hire and fire ministerial positions without regard to employment discrimination laws. In this new test of the limits of that decision, the appeals court is considering the dismissal of a Christian school teacher for becoming pregnant before she was married.
A lawyer for [Jaretta] Hamilton argued that she’s the victim of discrimination, that the principal fired her because she was pregnant and her maternity leave was going to be inconvenient for the school. A lawyer for the school countered that the school has a right to fire someone who violates its moral code and raised a recent Supreme Court decision that acknowledged the existence of an exception to anti-discrimination laws for churches.
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Circuit judges Ed Carnes, Beverly Martin and Adalberto Jordan focused most of their questions on whether Ennis had a mixed motive when he fired Hamilton and whether Hamilton can be considered a minister because of her role at a religious school.
The trial court ruled in favor of the school last summer.
