The U.S. supreme court and the ministerial exception doctrine

In the article the author aims to consider the approach of US legislatures and courts in resolving the contradictions between the First Amendment and anti-discrimination laws. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees religious organizations, exercising their constitutional right to profess religion, to freely choose their ministers without any obstacles or supervision from the State. At the same time, American legislation establishes that employers, as a general rule, cannot be guided by such criteria as religion when making a decision on hiring. It is noted that two main ways of solving the contradiction have been developed. First, the formulation of a legislative exception in subsection 702 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Secondly, the judicial application of the doctrine of “ministerial exception” which is sometimes called a “church exception” suggesting the impossibility of applying the anti-discrimination legislation of the United States in the field of labor relations of religious institutions with their “ministers”. The article defines the genesis of the doctrine of “exceptions for ministers” and reviews the key decisions of the appellate courts and the Supreme Court of the United States, starting with the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1871 in the case “Watson v. Jones” to two key cases considered in the XXI century, “Evangelical Lutheran Church and School Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Rights Commission employment Opportunities” (2012) and “Morrissey-Burrough v. Our Lady of Guadalupe School” (2020). Four criteria used by the Supreme Court to apply the “exception for ministers” are considered. As a result the author comes to the conclusion that in accordance with the approach adopted by the US courts, as soon as it is proved that the claim falls under the “exception for ministers”, further judicial review is excluded and the religious organization wins. The current judicial practice of the US Supreme Court on the “exception for ministers” seems to consider religious autonomy as the main value to be protected.