Thou Shalt Discriminate?

A recent New York Times article addressed the intersection of employee rights and the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. As stated in the article, religious organizations have long been exempted from fair hiring and employment practices by which other non-religious organizations must abide. These religious organizations are free to discriminate on the basis of religion, which means that someone whose personal life is not viewed as consistent with the beliefs of a religious employer can be fired, even if that person is a member of the same religious sect. These employers are also apparently free to discriminate based on age, disability or sex, without legal consequence. In addition, religious employers are exempt from pension laws and court rulings have made it easier for some, including hospitals affiliated with a religious sect, to resist efforts of employees to organize.

The article profiles the plights of two women training as nuns, one also working as a Catholic university’s chaplain; a minister; and a rabbi whose claims of discrimination based on gender, age, and disability, committed by religious entities, have met with little sympathy in the federal courts based only on the fact that the employers were religious in nature, and thus the government could not interfere with their employment practices. The article also profiles the struggle of faculty at a Catholic college and workers at a Seventh Day Adventist hospital to overcome employer attempts to prevent unionization. One undercurrent of the article is the irony that these entities, whom one would think would be the most compassionate and just of employers, have turned out to be some of the least sensitive because the federal government has made them exempt from the laws that guarantee employees’ basic human rights.
To read the whole article, go here.