The ex-principal of a Catholic elementary school had not held a religious position with the school but is nonetheless barred by the First Amendment’s ministerial exception from bringing a discrimination suit against her former employer, a federal appeals court ruled.
The case was the first time the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has weighed in on the ministerial exception since the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 2012 ruling in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, in which the court ruled that a teacher at a religious school in Michigan could not bring suit against her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act for firing her after she became sick.
