The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously struck down the claim of a Christian college in Wenham, Mass. that maintained it has the right, on religious grounds, to discriminate against a faculty member who spoke out against the school’s anti-LGBTQ policies.
The Boston Globe reported on Friday that:
The ruling concerns a dispute between instructor Margaret DeWeese-Boyd and Gordon College, a private Christian liberal arts school.
DeWeese-Boyd, who served as a professor of social work at Gordon for 18 years until she was denied a promotion to full professor in 2017, alleges in a civil lawsuit that the school “unlawfully retaliated against her for her vocal opposition to Gordon’s policies and practices regarding individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (or questioning), and others (LGBTQ+ persons), by denying her application for promotion to full professor, despite the fact that the faculty senate unanimously recommended her for the promotion,” said the 40-page ruling authored by Justice Scott L. Kafker.
Gordon and DeWeese-Boyd, Kafker wrote, had clashed in legal proceedings in Essex Superior Court over the question of whether the “ministerial exception,” which bars government interference in employment questions between religious institutions and their ministerial workers, applied to DeWeese-Boyd.
The exception for ministers is based on US Supreme Court precedent holding that the First Amendment prohibits the government from dictating to faith communities who promulgates the teachings of their religions, according to the ruling.
“The plaintiff contends that she was [unlawfully] terminated on the basis of her association with LGBTQ+ persons or on the basis of her gender,” Kafker wrote. “If the ministerial exception applies [to DeWeese-Boyd], even if such allegations are true, the religious institution will be free to discriminate on those bases. The same would be true for racial discrimination or discrimination on the basis of national origin.”
However, Kafker wrote, the SJC found that DeWeese-Boyd’s job description as a professor of social work did not meet the legal definition of minister, so the ministerial exception did not apply in her case. …
“In sum, we conclude that DeWeese-Boyd was expected and required to be a Christian teacher and scholar, but not a minister,” Kafker wrote. “Therefore, the ministerial exception cannot apply as a defense to her claims against Gordon,” which remain pending in Essex Superior Court [in DeeWeese-Boyd’s civil suit against the college].
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