Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru

Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued May 11, 2020 Decided July 8, 2020
Full case name	Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Agnes Morrissey-Berru St. James School v. Darryl Biel, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Kristen Biel
Docket nos.	19-267 19-348
Citations	591 U.S. ___ (more) 140 S. Ct. 2049
Case history
Prior	Summary judgment granted, Morrissey-Berru v. Our Lady of Guadalupe Sch., No. 2:16-cv-09353, 2017 WL 6527336 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 27, 2017); reversed and remanded, 769 F. App'x 460 (9th Cir. 2019); cert. granted, 140 S. Ct. 679 (2019) Summary judgment granted, Biel v. St. James Sch., No. 2:15-cv-04248, 2017 WL 5973293 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 24, 2017); reversed and remanded, 911 F.3d 603 (9th Cir. 2018); cert. granted, 140 S. Ct. 680 (2019)
Holding
The First Amendment ministerial exception extends to the adjudication of Morrissey-Berru's and Biel's employment-discrimination claims.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh
Case opinions
Majority	Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh
Concurrence	Thomas, joined by Gorsuch
Dissent	Sotomayor, joined by Ginsburg
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the ministerial exception of federal employment discrimination laws. The case extends from the Supreme Court's prior decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission^[1] which created the ministerial exception based on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the United States Constitution, asserting that federal discrimination laws cannot be applied to leaders of religious organizations. The case, along with the consolidated St. James School v. Biel (Docket 19-348), both arose from rulings in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found that federal discrimination laws do apply to others within a religious organization that serve an important religious function but lack the title or training to be considered a religious leader under Hosanna-Tabor. The religious organization challenged that ruling on the basis of Hosanna-Tabor. The Supreme Court ruled in a 7–2 decision on July 8, 2020 that reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling, affirming that the principles of Hosanna-Tabor, that a person can be serving an important religious function even if not holding the title or training of a religious leader, satisfied the ministerial exception in employment discrimination.