This is a big one.
The Supreme Court decided against the Obama administration today on what many have called the most important religious freedom case in decades. The case pitted the rights of religious organizations to choose their own ministers against the government's interest in preventing discrimination in the workplace. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Supreme Court unanimously acknowledged the existence of a "ministerial exception" that allows religious organizations — churches and the like — to decide who their employees are without government intervention.
Why "big"?
The court rejected the "extreme position" of the EEOC to limit the exception to only those employees who are engaged in "exclusively religious functions."
Yup. EEOC/Holder was "extreme."
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The actual text of the ruling is not very good though.
For example, it refuses to weigh in on what constitutes a minister of a religion. To me, the trajectory on this is negative. In Obama's next term I would expect a series of penal regulations that target traditional Catholic communities.
Again, it's the Lutherans who nail another 95 thesis to the wall of institutionalized gubbmint control at a time when her sister denominations juggle other legal considerations.
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