Supreme Court Upholds Religious Freedom

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The United States Supreme Court delivered a decisive blow to secular encroachments on America’s religious institutions, denying Big Government regulatory authority over them. As Justice Clarence Thomas put it, the high court shot down the federal government’s contention that “a religious group … conform its beliefs and practices regarding ‘ministers’ to the prevailing secular understanding.’”

And Big Government’s “secular understanding” is simple: there is no god greater than government.

The case in question is Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The case centered on Lutheran elementary school teacher Cheryl Perich, who took a leave of absence from her job after developing the sleeping disease narcolepsy. When doctors gave Perich the okay to return to work, Lutheran church authorities informed her that her condition might endanger the safety of children in her care.

Later, the church board voted to support church authorities, asking Perich to resign and agreeing to pay a portion of her health insurance premiums. Perich returned to work anyway and was told to leave the premises. Later, she informed the school that she contacted an attorney and would sue them for violating her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Perich’s threat was seen as an act of disobedience to church authority and she was fired.

The government, however, sided with Perich and took the church to court.

There was just one problem: the Constitution’s First Amendment ban on government prohibiting “the free exercise” of religion. As a teacher of Lutheran doctrine and a leader in her students’ religious activities, the church argued that Perich was under its authority and not Uncle Sam’s.

The EEOC countered that the high court should more narrowly define the church’s First Amendment protections, if for no other reason, than that “plaintiffs may seek purely monetary forms of relief, including damages and attorney’s fees …”

In other words, if government can’t dictate church doctrine and policies, it can be modified by attorney threats and big-buck civil judgments.

Whether we sympathize with Perich or not, the high court looked past the high emotion of the case and sided with a higher principle and the Constitution.

As Justice George Southerland observed in his 1933 dissent to a Supreme Court ruling, “If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch, as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned.”

And so, the Supreme Court saved religious freedom from not only the arbitrary power of government but the greedy “pinch” of bottom-feeding attorneys.