Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-18-01078/USCOURTS-caDC-18-01078-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
American Association of University Professors
Amicus Curiae for Respondent
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
Amicus Curiae for Petitioner
Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit
Respondent
National Labor Relations Board
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 11, 2018 Decided January 28, 2020

No. 18-1063

DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT,

PETITIONER

v.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD,

RESPONDENT

UNITED STEEL, PAPER AND FORESTRY, RUBBER,

MANUFACTURING, ALLIED-INDUSTRIAL AND SERVICE 

WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION, AFL-CIO-CLC,

INTERVENOR

Consolidated with 18-1078

On Petition for Review and Cross-Application

for Enforcement of an Order of

the National Labor Relations Board

Stanley J. Brown argued the cause for petitioner. With him 

on the briefs were Arnold E. Perl, Joel Buckman, Ira M. 

Feinberg, and Amy Folsom Kett.

Erin E. Murphy argued the cause for amicus curiae 

Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in support of 

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petitioner. With her on the brief were Paul D. Clement, Kasdin 

M. Mitchell, and Lauren N. Beebe.

Heather S. Beard, Attorney, National Labor Relations 

Board, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief 

were Peter B. Robb, General Counsel, John W. Kyle, Deputy 

General Counsel, Linda Dreeben, Deputy Associate General 

Counsel, and Elizabeth Heaney, Supervisory Attorney.

James B. Coppess argued the cause for intervenor. With 

him on the brief were Amanda Fisher and Nathan Kilbert.

Michael S. Wolly was on the brief for amicus curiae 

American Association of University Professors in support of 

respondent.

Before: ROGERS, GRIFFITH, and PILLARD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: The National Labor Relations 

Board ordered Duquesne University, a Catholic school in 

Pennsylvania, to bargain with a union representing the school’s 

adjunct faculty. Duquesne petitions for review, arguing that its 

religious mission places it beyond the Board’s jurisdiction. We 

agree. 

I

Duquesne was founded in 1878 by the priests and brothers 

of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, a Catholic religious 

order also known as the Spiritans. Today, Duquesne is 

organized as a non-profit corporation led by the Spiritans, who 

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have exclusive authority over the university’s mission and the 

appointment of its board of trustees, president, and officers. 

Duquesne describes itself as a “Catholic University in the 

Spiritan Tradition.” J.A. 70. That tradition, Duquesne explains,

endeavors to “preach the Gospel to those who have never heard 

it, or to those who have barely heard it, with particular attention 

. . . to young people, and to our educational works.” J.A. 297.

As the university’s mission statement puts it, “Duquesne serves 

God by serving students.” J.A. 70. 

Approximately 6,500 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate 

students attend Duquesne. They are taught by various types of 

faculty: tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure-track, executive,

visiting, emeritus, and part-time adjuncts. Adjunct faculty 

members are hired for one semester at a time, and each may 

teach up to six credit hours per semester. In total, adjunct

faculty teach approximately 44% of all credit hours in the Core

Curriculum, which is what Duquesne calls its generaleducation requirements. The Core Curriculum includes courses 

in math, writing, science, philosophy, theology, and ethics.

In 2012, some of the adjuncts sought to unionize. The 

United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, 

Allied-Industrial and Service Workers International Union, 

AFL-CIO-CLC (the “Union”) petitioned the National Labor 

Relations Board (NLRB or the “Board”) to certify it as the 

exclusive bargaining representative for the adjunct faculty in 

Duquesne’s liberal arts college. At the time of the election, 

there were approximately eighty-eight such adjuncts in the 

proposed bargaining unit, and a majority voted for the Union. 

Duquesne ultimately asked the Board to vacate the election and 

dismiss the Union’s petition. Relying on the Supreme Court’s 

decision in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490 

(1979), and our decision in University of Great Falls v. NLRB,

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278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002), Duquesne argued that the 

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—when read in light of 

the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment—does not 

authorize the Board to exercise jurisdiction in this matter.

The Board’s Regional Director rejected that argument. 

Applying the Board’s decision in Pacific Lutheran University, 

361 N.L.R.B. 1404 (2014), she concluded that the Board had

jurisdiction because Duquesne did not hold out to the public 

that its adjunct faculty performed specific religious roles at the 

school. She then recommended that the Union be certified as 

the exclusive bargaining representative of the adjuncts. On 

review, a divided three-member panel of the Board agreed with 

the Regional Director, but the panel excluded from the 

bargaining unit adjunct faculty who teach theology. Duquesne 

Univ., No. 06-RC-080933, 2017 WL 1330294, at *1 & n.3

(N.L.R.B. Apr. 10, 2017). The dissenting member would have 

held that the Board lacked jurisdiction. Id. at *1 (Member 

Miscimarra, dissenting).

Duquesne refused to bargain with the Union, which drew

an unfair-labor-practice charge that was heard by a different 

three-member panel of the Board. The panel ordered Duquesne

to bargain without revisiting the jurisdictional question.

Duquesne Univ., 366 N.L.R.B. No. 27, 2018 WL 1137769, at 

*1, *3 (Feb. 28, 2018). 

Duquesne now petitions for review of the Board’s decision 

and order, arguing that the Board lacks jurisdiction and that the 

Board’s order violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

The Board cross-petitions for enforcement of its order. We 

have jurisdiction over the petition for review under 29 U.S.C. 

§ 160(f), and over the cross-petition under § 160(e).

II

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The Board began asserting jurisdiction over religious 

schools and their teachers in the 1970s. Since then, the Board 

has justified its jurisdiction in a variety of ways, but the Board’s 

efforts have not met with success in the courts. The Supreme 

Court and the courts of appeals have held that the NLRA—read 

in light of the Religion Clauses—does not allow the Board to 

exercise jurisdiction in a series of cases over the past several 

decades. We reach the same conclusion in this case.

The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment provide that 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” U.S. CONST. 

amend. I. The Establishment Clause limits governmental 

involvement in the affairs of religious groups, and the Free 

Exercise Clause safeguards the freedom to practice religion, 

whether as an individual or as part of a group. See HosannaTabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 

171, 181-90 (2012). In tandem, the Religion Clauses establish 

a “scrupulous policy . . . against a political interference with 

religious affairs.” Id. at 184 (quoting Letter from James 

Madison to Bishop Carroll (Nov. 20, 1806)).

The First Amendment “gives special solicitude to the 

rights of religious organizations,” id. at 189, guaranteeing them

“independence from secular control or manipulation,” id. at 

199 (Alito, J., joined by Kagan, J., concurring) (quoting 

Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952)).

Religious organizations warrant First Amendment protections 

in part because “religious activity derives meaning in large 

measure from participation in a larger religious community.

Such a community represents an ongoing tradition of shared 

beliefs, an organic entity not reducible to a mere aggregation 

of individuals.” Corp. of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus 

Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327, 342 (1987) 

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(Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment). For many 

Americans, religion cannot be exercised apart from religious 

organizations, and therefore “these organizations must be 

protected” by the First Amendment. Id. at 341-42 (quoting 

Douglas Laycock, Towards a General Theory of the Religion 

Clauses: The Case of Church Labor Relations and the Right to 

Church Autonomy, 81 COLUM. L. REV. 1373, 1389 (1981)).

Religious organizations are also employers potentially 

subject to the Board’s jurisdiction under the NLRA. See 29 

U.S.C. §§ 152(2), 158(a), 160(a). But recognizing the risk of

violating the Religion Clauses, the Board “generally will not 

assert jurisdiction over nonprofit, religious organizations,” and 

it disclaims jurisdiction over “religious institutions which 

operate in a conventional sense using conventional means.” St. 

Edmund’s Roman Catholic Church, 337 N.L.R.B. 1260, 1260 

(2002). Typically, this means that the Board will not get 

involved in disputes between churches and their employees for 

fear of interfering with the churches’ religious missions. See, 

e.g., id. at 1261, 1266 & n.7 (church custodians); Riverside 

Church, 309 N.L.R.B. 806, 806-07 (1992) (church custodians, 

electricians, plumbers, and garage attendants, among others); 

Faith Ctr.-WHCT Channel 18, 261 N.L.R.B. 106, 107-08, 113 

(1982) (broadcast engineers who worked at the church’s 

television station); see also Motherhouse of the Sisters of 

Charity, 232 N.L.R.B. 318, 318 (1977) (service employees 

who worked at a religious order’s convent and nursing home). 

Just like churches, schools may pursue a religious mission. 

Indeed, education is at the core of religious activity for many 

Americans. See Am. Br. of the Ass’n of Catholic Colls. & 

Univs. 15-20; see also Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 177, 191-

92; id. at 201 (Alito, J., joined by Kagan, J., concurring); 

Catholic Bishop of Chi. v. NLRB, 559 F.2d 1112, 1118 (7th Cir. 

1977), aff’d, 440 U.S. 490. Yet the Board has taken a different 

approach to religious schools, asserting jurisdiction over them

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and their teachers despite their religious missions, only to have 

courts hold that the Board’s actions were not authorized by the 

NLRA.

The seminal decision is NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of 

Chicago, 440 U.S. 490 (1979). In the decades before that case,

the Board did not assert jurisdiction over private non-profit 

schools. See id. at 497; Trs. of Columbia Univ. in the City of 

N.Y., 97 N.L.R.B. 424, 425-27 (1951). This changed in the 

1970s, when the Board began to assert jurisdiction over private 

universities and high schools, including some religious 

schools. See Cornell Univ., 183 N.L.R.B. 329, 334 (1970); 

Shattuck Sch., 189 N.L.R.B. 886, 886 (1971); Roman Catholic 

Archdiocese, 216 N.L.R.B. 249, 250 (1975). The Board 

distinguished between schools it deemed “completely 

religious,” which the Board continued to leave alone, and those 

it thought only “religiously associated,” which the Board 

regulated. Roman Catholic Archdiocese, 216 N.L.R.B. at 250; 

Cardinal Timothy Manning, 223 N.L.R.B. 1218, 1218 (1976).

Using this approach, the Board compelled Catholic high 

schools in Chicago and Indiana to bargain with unions 

representing lay teachers. See Catholic Bishop, 440 U.S. at 

493-94.

The Supreme Court rejected the Board’s approach.

Reading the NLRA to avoid the risk of violating the Religion 

Clauses, the Court held in Catholic Bishop that the NLRA does 

not authorize the Board to exercise jurisdiction over teachers in 

a church-operated school, no matter whether the school is 

“completely religious” or merely “religiously associated.” Id. 

at 500, 507. The Court explained that teachers play a “critical 

and unique role . . . in fulfilling the mission of a churchoperated school.” Id. at 501. This holds true regardless of 

whether the teacher provides instruction in religious or secular 

subjects. See id. at 501-02. Given this vital role played by 

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teachers, exercising jurisdiction over disputes involving 

teachers at any church-operated school presented a “significant 

risk that the First Amendment will be infringed.” Id. at 502. For 

example, if a school took action against teachers for failing to 

comply with religious principles, an ensuing unfair-laborpractice proceeding might call upon the Board to determine 

whether the school’s actions were justified “by their religious 

creeds.” Id. This would “involve inquiry into the good faith of 

the position asserted by the clergy-administrators and its 

relationship to the school’s religious mission.” Id. The “very 

process” of such an inquiry threatened to “impinge on rights 

guaranteed by the Religion Clauses.” Id. Furthermore, 

exercising jurisdiction would entangle the Board in the “terms 

and conditions of employment” of teachers, which would 

involve the Board in “nearly everything that goes on” in 

religious schools. Id. at 502-03 (internal quotation marks 

omitted). It would also “[i]nevitably . . . implicate sensitive 

issues that open the door to conflicts between clergyadministrators and the Board, or conflicts with negotiators for 

unions.” Id. at 503. Seeing “no escape from conflicts flowing 

from the Board’s exercise of jurisdiction . . . and the consequent 

serious First Amendment questions that would follow,” the 

Supreme Court held that the Board lacked jurisdiction over 

teachers in church-operated schools. Id. at 504, 507.

A few months after the Court rejected the Board’s 

assertion of jurisdiction in Catholic Bishop, the Board claimed 

authority over religious colleges and universities, arguing that 

the holding of Catholic Bishop was limited to primary and 

secondary schools. See Barber-Scotia Coll., 245 N.L.R.B. 406, 

406 (1979). Religious colleges and universities were different, 

the Board argued, because “college students are less 

impressionable and less susceptible to religious 

indoctrination,” “the internal discipline inherent in college 

courses minimizes the possibility of sectarian influence,” and 

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“a high degree of academic freedom often exists at churchrelated colleges and universities.” Id. The Board also decided 

that Catholic Bishop did not keep it from regulating schools 

that were “primarily concerned with providing a secular 

education, rather than with inculcating particular religious 

values.” Id. at 407; accord Universidad Cent. de Bayamon, 273 

N.L.R.B. 1110, 1110, 1113 (1984).

The First Circuit declined to approve of the Board’s 

position in Universidad Central de Bayamon v. NLRB, 793 

F.2d 383 (1st Cir. 1985) (evenly divided en banc). Writing for 

half of the en banc court, then-Judge Breyer explained that 

Catholic Bishop prohibited the Board from distinguishing

between religious schools that primarily teach secular subjects 

and those that seek to inculcate religious values more expressly 

and overtly. See id. at 402-03. The very inquiry needed to make 

that distinction would entangle the Board in religious affairs.

See id. Importantly, Judge Breyer observed that exercising 

jurisdiction over either type of school risked violating the First 

Amendment, for religious values may “permeate the 

educational process” even at a school whose “predominant” 

mission is providing students with a secular education. Id. at 

401-02. Judge Breyer also explained that Catholic Bishop 

applied to colleges and universities no less than other schools: 

“[T]he language of Catholic Bishop itself does not distinguish 

colleges from primary and secondary schools,” and the risk of 

“state/religion entanglement . . . would seem as great in 

colleges as in secondary schools.” Id. at 401. “Unfair labor 

practice charges would seem as likely; the Board’s likely 

scrutiny would seem at least as intense; the necessary 

distinctions between religious and labor matters would seem no 

easier to make; and whether one could readily ‘fence off’

subjects of mandatory bargaining with a religious content 

would seem similarly in doubt.” Id. at 403.

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Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Catholic 

Bishop and the First Circuit’s decision in Bayamon, the Board

developed a different approach to jurisdiction over religious 

schools, this time asserting authority over schools that lacked a

“substantial religious character.” Univ. of Great Falls, 331 

N.L.R.B. 1663 (2000).

We categorically rejected the Board’s test in University of 

Great Falls v. NLRB, 278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002), which 

involved faculty at the University of Great Falls, a Catholic 

school in Montana. We explained that determining whether a 

school had a “substantial religious character” involved the 

same “intrusive inquiry” and the “exact kind of questioning 

into religious matters which Catholic Bishop specifically 

sought to avoid,” with “the NLRB trolling through the beliefs 

of the University, making determinations about its religious 

mission, and that mission’s centrality to the ‘primary purpose’ 

of the University.” Id. at 1341-43. “[T]he nature of the Board’s 

inquiry,” we observed, “boils down to ‘is [the University] 

sufficiently religious?’” Id. at 1343. Such a question “creates 

the same constitutional concerns that led to the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Catholic Bishop,” as well its subsequent 

decisions in Corp. of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327

(1987), and Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793 (2000). Great 

Falls, 278 F.3d at 1341. In Mitchell, a plurality of the Supreme

Court “rejected ‘inquiry into . . . religious views’ as ‘not only 

unnecessary but also offensive.’” Id. (quoting Mitchell, 530 

U.S. at 828). The same “prohibition on such intrusive inquiries 

into religious beliefs underlay the decision in Presiding 

Bishop.” Id. at 1342. In that case, the Supreme Court “noted the 

difficulty of judicially deciding which activities of a religious 

organization were religious and which were secular,” id.,

observing that the line “is hardly a bright one . . . and an 

organization might understandably be concerned that a judge 

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would not understand its religious tenets and sense of mission,” 

id. (quoting Presiding Bishop, 483 U.S. at 336).

To avoid the First Amendment concerns raised by the 

Board’s new policy, we concluded that Catholic Bishop, along 

with Mitchell and Presiding Bishop, “require[d] a different 

approach.” Id. at 1343. Thus was born our Great Falls test.

“[I]n determining whether an institution is exempt from the 

NLRA under Catholic Bishop,” we held that “the Board should 

consider whether the institution: (a) holds itself out to the 

public as a religious institution; (b) is non-profit; and (c) is 

religiously affiliated.” Id. at 1347. “If so, then the Board must

decline to exercise jurisdiction.” Id. We described this as a 

“bright-line test” to “determine whether an entity is altogether

exempt from the NLRA.” Id. And we explained that the test 

“will allow the Board to determine whether it has jurisdiction 

without delving into matters of religious doctrine or motive, 

and without coercing an educational institution into altering its 

religious mission to meet regulatory demands,” thus avoiding 

the pitfalls of the Board’s prior tests. Id. at 1345. At the same 

time, this approach reasonably assures that the exemption “will 

not be abused” because it applies only to schools that publicly 

represent that they provide a religious environment. Id. at 

1344-45. Such representations serve as a “market check” 

because “public religious identification will no doubt attract 

some students and faculty to the institution,” but “it will 

dissuade others.” Id. at 1344.

After Great Falls, the Board issued several decisions 

assuming without deciding that our test governed its 

jurisdiction. See, e.g., Salvation Army, 345 N.L.R.B. 550, 551 

(2005); Catholic Soc. Servs., 355 N.L.R.B. 929, 930 (2010).

But the Board did not follow our test in asserting jurisdiction 

over a dispute involving faculty members at Carroll College, a 

Presbyterian school in Wisconsin that satisfied the Great Falls 

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test. We rejected the Board’s decision even though the college 

never raised the jurisdictional issue before the Board. Carroll 

Coll. v. NLRB, 558 F.3d 568, 574 (D.C. Cir. 2009). The Board, 

we held, “should have known immediately” that the college 

was “patently beyond the NLRB’s jurisdiction.” Id. We 

stressed that “Great Falls created a bright-line test,” and a 

school that satisfies this test “is exempt from NLRB 

jurisdiction.” Id. at 572, 574. We also explained that in light of 

the Supreme Court’s commands, we had made clear in Great 

Falls that the Board may not “question[] the sincerity of the 

school’s public representations about the significance of its 

religious affiliation” or conduct a “skeptical inquiry” into 

whether an affiliated church exerts influence over the school. 

Id. at 572-74. The permissible inquiry is simple and limited. 

The Board must look “solely” at the school’s “public 

representations as to its religious educational environment.” Id.

at 572-73. Anything more, “neither the Board nor we may do.” 

Id. at 573.

In Pacific Lutheran University, 361 N.L.R.B. 1404 (2014), 

the Board created a new way to determine its jurisdiction over 

a religious school. Under the new test, a religious college or 

university seeking to avoid the Board’s jurisdiction must first

show that “it holds itself out as providing a religious 

educational environment.” Id. at 1414. This threshold 

requirement is similar to our Great Falls test, but satisfying it 

is not enough to avoid the Board’s jurisdiction. Id. at 1410. The 

school must also show that “it holds out the petitioned-for 

faculty members themselves as performing a specific role in 

creating or maintaining the college or university’s religious 

educational environment, as demonstrated by its 

representations to current or potential students and faculty 

members, and the community at large.” Id. at 1414.

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Two members of the Board vigorously dissented. 

According to Member Miscimarra, “the Board should simply 

embrace and apply the three-part test articulated by the D.C. 

Circuit in University of Great Falls.” Id. at 1429 (Member 

Miscimarra, dissenting in part). He pointed out that “every 

unfair labor practice decision by the Board may be appealed to 

the D.C. Circuit”; thus, “even if one disagreed with Great 

Falls, any attempt by the Board to chart a different path appears 

predestined to futility.” Id. (citing 29 U.S.C. § 160(f)). Member 

Johnson argued that the “specific religious role” requirement 

of Pacific Lutheran “not only fails to avoid the First 

Amendment questions, it plows right into them at full tilt” by 

again calling on the Board “to judge the religiosity of the 

functions that the faculty perform.” Id. at 1433-34 (Member 

Johnson, dissenting). 

A divided Board applied the Pacific Lutheran test in this 

case. The panel acknowledged that Duquesne holds itself out 

as providing a religious educational environment, but the 

Board exercised jurisdiction because adjuncts outside the 

Theology Department are not held out as performing a specific 

role in creating or maintaining Duquesne’s religious

educational environment. See J.A. 69, 77-78; Duquesne Univ., 

No. 06-RC-080933, 2017 WL 1330294, at *1 & n.3.

1

1 The Board has applied Pacific Lutheran to assert jurisdiction 

over several other religious schools, often with Board members 

dissenting or expressing “no opinion” on whether Pacific Lutheran 

was rightly decided. See, e.g., Loyola Univ. Chi. Emp’r, No. 13-RC168082, 2016 WL 3924182 (N.L.R.B. July 20, 2016); Seattle Univ.,

364 N.L.R.B. No. 84, 2016 WL 4437681 (Aug. 23, 2016); Bethany 

Coll., No. 14-CA-201546, 2017 WL 6262290 (N.L.R.B. Dec. 6, 

2017); Saint Xavier Univ., 366 N.L.R.B. No. 31, 2018 WL 1256649 

(Mar. 9, 2018); Manhattan Coll., 366 N.L.R.B. No. 73, 2018 WL 

2003450 (Apr. 27, 2018). Some of these religious schools have 

petitioned us for review. We are holding their petitions in abeyance 

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III

Duquesne argues that Great Falls and Carroll College 

foreclose the Board’s jurisdiction. Our review is de novo. See 

Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1340-41. We agree with Duquesne.

A

This case begins and ends with our decisions in Great 

Falls and Carroll College. In Great Falls, we established a 

“bright-line” test for determining whether the NLRA 

authorizes the Board to exercise jurisdiction in cases involving 

religious schools and their teachers or faculty. 278 F.3d at

1347. Under this test, the Board lacks jurisdiction if the school 

(1) holds itself out to the public as a religious institution (i.e., 

as providing a “religious educational environment”); (2) is nonprofit; and (3) is religiously affiliated. Id. at 1343-44. Seven 

years after Great Falls, we reiterated in Carroll College that 

this test governs the Board’s jurisdiction, 558 F.3d at 572, 574, 

and we do so again today. This case involves faculty members 

and Duquesne satisfies the Great Falls test. The NLRA 

therefore does not empower the Board to exercise jurisdiction.

As an initial matter, the adjuncts here are clearly faculty 

members. In Duquesne’s faculty handbook, the adjuncts who 

make up the bargaining unit are identified as “adjunct faculty” 

and listed among the different types of faculty at Duquesne. 

J.A. 768-70. Furthermore, the adjuncts possessthe key attribute 

of faculty members: They educate students. In fact, according 

pending the decision in this case. See Order, Manhattan Coll. v. 

NLRB, No. 18-1113 (D.C. Cir. June 26, 2018); Order, Saint Xavier 

Univ. v. NLRB, No. 18-1076 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 19, 2018). 

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to the faculty handbook, their only responsibility is teaching.

See J.A. 770 (“As a rule, adjuncts are responsible only for 

teaching.”). As we will explain below, it makes no difference 

whether the adjuncts are faculty members who play a role in

Duquesne’s religious educational environment. Once we 

determine that they are faculty members or teachers of any sort, 

the Great Falls test applies, and that test does not permit us to 

examine the roles played by the faculty members involved in 

the case. 

Applying Great Falls, the Board lacks jurisdiction. The 

parties do not dispute that Duquesne satisfies the test. Nor 

could they. As the Board’s Regional Director found, Duquesne 

is a non-profit school affiliated with the Catholic Church and 

the Spiritan religious order, and Duquesne holds itself out as 

providing a religious educational environment by publicly 

identifying itself as a Catholic institution guided by Catholic 

principles, providing regular Catholic religious services on 

campus, and encouraging students to participate in religious 

study groups, lectures, and projects. J.A. 69-71, 76-77; see 

Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1345; Carroll Coll., 558 F.3d at 573-

74.

B

Apparently unpersuaded by Great Falls and Carroll 

College, the Board used its new Pacific Lutheran test to assert

jurisdiction over Duquesne. Pacific Lutheran runs afoul of our 

precedent by claiming jurisdiction in cases that we have placed

beyond the Board’s reach. That is, Pacific Lutheran extendsthe 

Board’s jurisdiction to cases involving faculty at schools that 

satisfy the Great Falls test, specifically those schools that 

(according to the Board) do not hold out the faculty members 

as playing a specific role in the school’s religious educational 

environment. Pac. Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1410. But our 

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precedent is clear: Great Falls is a bright-line test. If it is 

satisfied, the school is “altogether exempt from the NLRA,” 

and “the Board must decline to exercise jurisdiction.” Great 

Falls, 278 F.3d at 1347; accord Carroll Coll., 558 F.3d at 572, 

574-75. The Board may not “dig deeper” by examining 

whether faculty members play religious or non-religious roles,

for “[d]oing so would only risk infringing upon the guarantees 

of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses.” Carroll Coll., 

558 F.3d at 572. We have no power to revisit this precedent. 

See LaShawn A. v. Barry, 87 F.3d 1389, 1395 (D.C. Cir. 1996) 

(en banc); Am. Hosp. Ass’n v. Price, 867 F.3d 160, 165 (D.C. 

Cir. 2017). 

The Board acknowledges that Pacific Lutheran cannot be 

squared with our precedent. See Pac. Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. 

at 1408-09. Indeed, in adopting its new test in Pacific Lutheran, 

the Board rejected Great Falls as an “overreach[]” that “goes 

too far.” Id. at 1409. Rather than arguing that Pacific Lutheran 

follows our precedent, the Board claims that it “reasonably 

found” that Great Falls’ “rationale for examining how a 

university holds itself out extends to consideration of how it 

holds out its faculty members.” NLRB Br. 28. But Great Falls 

adopted a bright-line test, not a “rationale” that the Board may 

“extend” in a way that asserts jurisdiction over schools that the 

test places outside the Board’s power. 

For its part, the Union argues that Pacific Lutheran

complies with our precedent because Great Falls “did not hold 

that the Board must decide jurisdiction . . . without regard for 

the role played by the faculty.” Union Br. 29. According to the 

Union, the question simply “did not arise.” Id. To the contrary,

the question featured prominently in Great Falls. The test at 

issue—the Board’s “substantial religious character” test—

assessed the roles of the teachers who sought to unionize. For 

example, the test considered “the role of the unit employees in 

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effectuating the [college’s religious] purpose” and whether 

“religious criteria are used for the appointment and evaluation 

of faculty.” Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1339 (quoting Great Falls, 

331 N.L.R.B. 1663). And before us, the parties debated 

whether the university’s faculty members played significant 

religious roles. See, e.g., Univ. of Great Falls Br. 15-17, 24-25, 

29-33, Univ. of Great Falls v. NLRB, No. 00-1415 (D.C. Cir. 

July 23, 2001); NLRB Br. 33-38, Univ. of Great Falls v. NLRB, 

No. 00-1415 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 10, 2001). Despite being 

confronted by the issue, we did not hold that the Board’s 

jurisdiction was affected by the religious or non-religious roles

played by the faculty members. Rather, we held that the NLRA 

does not empower the Board to exercise jurisdiction in cases 

involving schools with three particular features, none of which 

depend on the role played by the petitioned-for faculty

members. 

Our refusal to examine the roles played by various faculty 

members followed directly from Catholic Bishop. There, the 

Supreme Court recognized that teachers play a “critical and 

unique role” in advancing the mission of religious schools.

Catholic Bishop, 440 U.S. at 501. This holds true, the Supreme 

Court explained, regardless of whether the teachers provide 

instruction in religious or secular subjects. No matter the 

subject taught, “a teacher remains a teacher,” and “a teacher’s

handling” of even secular subjects may implicate the school’s 

religious mission. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Because a school’s religious mission may be “intertwined” 

with even “secular instruction,” the Supreme Court did not 

differentiate between teachers who play religious roles and 

those who play secular roles, but rather held that the Board 

lacked jurisdiction over all teachers at church-operated 

schools. Id. at 501, 507 (internal quotation marks omitted).

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Similarly, then-Judge Breyer explained in Bayamon that

creating and administering distinctions between religious and 

secular instruction at religious universities “would itself 

entangle the Board in religious affairs.” 793 F.2d at 402-03. 

This entanglement could not be avoided by crafting a 

bargaining unit that excludes faculty members who appear 

most closely tied to a university’s religious mission; to create 

and administer such distinctions “is to tread the path that 

Catholic Bishop forecloses.” Id. at 402. Furthermore, 

regardless of the roles played by the teachers involved in a case, 

Judge Breyer observed that permitting the Board to exercise

jurisdiction risked entangling the government with the

university’s religious mission. See id. at 402-03. Boardmandated bargaining involving any teachers at religious 

universities would likely “concern the whole of school life,”

including the religious mission, id., for “nearly everything that 

goes on in the school affects teachers and is therefore arguably 

a condition of employment,” id. (quoting Catholic Bishop, 440 

U.S. at 503).

Great Falls and Carroll College followed the same 

principles in holding that the Board’s jurisdiction depends on 

three features of the religious school, not the roles played by 

the faculty members involved in the case. By contrast, Pacific 

Lutheran impermissibly intrudes into religious matters. The 

Board suggests that it can avoid constitutional problems by 

considering only whether a religious school “holds out” faculty 

members as playing a specific religious role, Pac. Lutheran, 

361 N.L.R.B. at 1410; NLRB Br. 30, but such an inquiry would 

still require the Board to define what counts as a “religious 

role” or a “religious function.” Just as the Board may not 

determine whether a university is “sufficiently religious,” Great 

Falls, 278 F.3d at 1343, the Board may not determine whether 

various faculty members play sufficiently religious roles. 

Defining which roles qualify would be far outside the 

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competence of Board members and judges. See Presiding 

Bishop, 483 U.S. at 336; Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 729 

(1871); Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1341-42; Colo. Christian 

Univ. v. Weaver, 534 F.3d 1245, 1265 (10th Cir. 2008)

(McConnell, J.). It would also lead to just “the sort of intrusive 

inquiry that Catholic Bishop sought to avoid,” with the Board 

“trolling through the beliefs of the University,” making 

determinations about its religious mission and whether certain 

faculty members contribute to that mission. Great Falls, 278 

F.3d at 1341-42. This “is no business of the State.” Colo.

Christian Univ., 534 F.3d at 1264. The “very process” of such 

an inquiry by the Board, as well as the Board’s conclusions, 

would “impinge on rights guaranteed by the Religion Clauses.”

Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1341 (quoting Catholic Bishop, 440 

U.S. at 502); see also Presiding Bishop, 483 U.S. at 343-44 

(Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment) (a “case-by-case” 

inquiry into whether an organization’s activities are religious 

or secular entangles the government in religious affairs and 

“create[s] the danger of chilling religious activity” by 

disrupting “the community’s process of self-definition”).2

For example, consider how the Board intended to 

determine which faculty roles count as sufficiently religious. 

Some roles would qualify: “integrating the institution’s 

religious teachings into coursework, serving as religious 

2 In rejecting Pacific Lutheran, we do not address whether the 

Board could exercise jurisdiction over a religious school that 

formally and affirmatively disclaims any religious role for certain 

faculty members. That issue is not presented here, for Pacific 

Lutheran held that the Board has jurisdiction unless the religious 

school shows that it holds out the faculty members as playing a 

specific religious role, which is not the same as a standard that says 

the Board lacks jurisdiction unless the religious school formally and 

affirmatively disclaims any religious role for certain faculty 

members. 

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advisors to students, propagating religious tenets, or engaging 

in religious indoctrination or religious training.” Pac. 

Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1412. But, the Board said, “general 

or aspirational statements” that faculty members must support 

the religious mission of a school would not establish that they

play sufficiently religious roles, and “[t]his is especially true 

when the university also asserts a commitment to diversity and 

academic freedom, further putting forth the message that 

religion has no bearing on faculty members’ job duties.” Id. at 

1411-12. 

With these distinctions, the Board impermissibly sided

with a particular view of religious functions: Indoctrination is 

sufficiently religious, but supporting religious goals is not, and 

especially not when faculty enjoy academic freedom. This 

“threaten[s] to embroil the government in line-drawing and 

second-guessing regarding matters about which it has neither 

competence nor legitimacy.” Colo. Christian Univ., 534 F.3d 

at 1264-65; see Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1346; Bayamon, 793 

F.2d at 402. And the Board’s distinctions refuse to accept that 

faculty members might contribute to a school’s religious 

mission by exercising their academic freedom, even though

many religious schools understand the work of their faculty to 

be religious in just this way. Indeed, 194 schools (including 

Duquesne) represent that academic freedom is an “essential 

component” of their religious identities, critical to their mission 

of “freely searching for all truth.” Am. Br. of the Ass’n of 

Catholic Colls. & Univs. 16-17 (quoting U.S. Conference of 

Catholic Bishops, Ex Corde Ecclesiae: The Application to the 

United States art. 2 (June 1, 2000)). This commitment to 

academic freedom does not become “any less religious” simply 

because secular schools share the same commitment, nor 

because it advances the school’s religious mission in an “openminded” manner as opposed to “hard-nosed proselytizing.”

Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1346. Yet rather than accepting at face 

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value that academic freedom serves a religious function, the 

Board sees academic freedom as the opposite: a sign that 

“religion has no bearing on faculty members’ job duties.” Pac. 

Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1411. The Board may not “secondguess” or “minimize the legitimacy of the beliefs expressed by 

a religious entity” in this way. Colo. Christian Univ., 534 F.3d 

at 1265-66; Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1345. 

C

In the dissent’s view, Great Falls and Carroll College 

never addressed whether “adjunct faculty . . . retain their 

NLRA rights.” Dissent at 1. Instead, those decisions exempted 

only “permanent, full-time faculty.” Id. But the dissent’s theory

assumes that Great Falls and Carroll College already allow the 

Board to retain jurisdiction over “non-faculty staff at avowedly 

religious schools.” Id.; see also id. at 16-17. To the contrary, 

some language in those decisions seems to suggest that our 

“bright-line” test exempts institutions from the Board’s 

jurisdiction—not categories of employees. E.g., Great Falls, 

278 F.3d at 1343 (exempting “an institution”); Carroll College, 

558 F.3d at 572 (exempting a “school”). Thus, the dissent’s 

fundamental premise—that the Board may still assert 

jurisdiction over some non-faculty employees—depends, at 

best, on a debatable reading of those decisions.

In any event, the dissent errs by asserting that adjuncts are 

somehow more like non-faculty employees than they are like 

faculty. Parsing the adjuncts’ “terms of employment,” see 

Dissent at 8-10, misses the forest for the trees. Adjuncts teach 

students, thus performing the “critical and unique role of the 

teacher in fulfilling the mission of a church-operated school.” 

Catholic Bishop, 440 U.S. at 501. Indeed, Duquesne itself says 

that a core element of its religious mission is education, see J.A. 

70 (“Duquesne serves God by serving students.”), adjuncts 

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22

teach nearly half of the Core Curriculum, and these Core 

classes “provide[] students with the opportunity to explore how 

religious faith and spiritual values enrich human life,” J.A. 

1090. In short, it is clear to us that adjuncts perform the 

mission-critical task of educating students at a “Catholic 

University in the Spiritan Tradition.” J.A. 70.

The dissent’s defense of Pacific Lutheran also underscores 

that decision’s incompatibility with the Religion Clauses. In 

this case, following Pacific Lutheran, the Board’s Regional 

Director found that reasonable adjunct candidates “would not 

conclude that any religious responsibilities were required by 

their job duties.” J.A. 78 (emphasis added). The dissent sees 

nothing wrong with this analysis, and it describes Pacific 

Lutheran’s test as “non-intrusive.” Dissent at 11. To the 

contrary, Pacific Lutheran led the Board’s Regional Director 

to ask exactly the impermissible question: Would a “reasonable

candidate” (in the Board’s judgment, not Duquesne’s) think an 

adjunct’s responsibilities were sufficiently “religious”? J.A. 

78. That question compels the Board (and federal courts) to 

“mak[e] determinations” about Duquesne’s “religious 

mission” and about the “centrality” of these adjuncts to that

mission. Carroll College, 558 F.3d at 572 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). Pacific Lutheran thus invites—and the dissent 

would allow—the very constitutional harms that Great Falls

and Carroll College sought to avert. 

***

In sum, Pacific Lutheran runs afoul of our decisions in 

Great Falls and Carroll College, which continue to govern the 

reach of the Board’s jurisdiction under the NLRA in cases 

involving religious schools and their faculty members or 

teachers. Accordingly, the Board has no jurisdiction here. We 

therefore need not address Duquesne’s arguments that the 

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23

Board lacks jurisdiction for other reasons and that the Board 

has violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Also, we 

need not resolve the extent of the Board’s jurisdiction under the 

NLRA in cases involving religious schools and their nonfaculty employees, nor must we address the powers of other 

agencies in cases involving different statutes or constitutional 

provisions. This is not one of those cases. 

IV

 

We grant the petition for review, vacate the Board’s 

decision and order, and deny the cross-application for 

enforcement.

So ordered.

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PILLARD, Circuit Judge, dissenting: I disagree with my 

colleagues that this case “begins and ends” with University of 

Great Falls v. NLRB, 278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002), and 

Carroll College, Inc. v. NLRB, 558 F.3d 568 (D.C. Cir. 2009).

Maj. Op. at 14. It is not at all apparent that temporary, parttime adjuncts whom the school does not even hold out as agents 

of its religious mission necessarily fall within an exemption 

from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. 

§ 151 et seq., that was drawn to account for the “critical and 

unique role” of faculty in “fulfilling the mission of a churchoperated school.” NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chi., 440 U.S. 

490, 501 (1979). The parties, my colleagues, and I agree that 

full faculty are exempt, and that this case does not address the 

applicability of the NLRA’s workplace protections to nonfaculty staff at avowedly religious schools. Instead, the dispute 

is over application of the exemption to adjunct faculty, an issue 

no court has yet decided. Are adjuncts exempted under 

Catholic Bishop on religious grounds, like permanent faculty, 

or do they, like religious schools’ other personnel, retain their 

NLRA rights?

The test the National Labor Relations Board (Board or 

NLRB) applied to resolve that open question derives not from 

this case, but from Pacific Lutheran University, 361 N.L.R.B. 

1404 (2014), yet this is the first petition asking us to review it. 

The Board ruled that adjunct faculty may be exempted, but 

only where the university “holds [them] out” as “performing a 

specific role in creating or maintaining the university’s 

religious purpose or mission.” Id. at 1411. This deferential 

standard avoids any intrusive review of the teachers’ actual 

duties, requiring only that schools provide clear notice that they 

cast their adjuncts in a religious role. The Board then accepts

at face value the schools’ representations to that effect. 

Applying a holding-out requirement to adjuncts seeks to ensure 

that the exemption is not applied where it serves no purpose. I 

believe that modest requirement is more consistent with the 

competing concerns here than the majority’s blanket 

USCA Case #18-1078 Document #1825902 Filed: 01/28/2020 Page 24 of 46
2

conclusion that all adjuncts at a religious university serve a 

religious function, even where their employer has never held 

them out as doing so.

The Board’s approach has several advantages. It faithfully 

adapts the holding-out method we articulated in Great Falls

and Carroll College, using it to apply Catholic Bishop to a type 

of religious-school employee not yet addressed. It recognizes 

the significant structural and functional differences between 

adjuncts and full faculty at many schools, as well as the 

heterogeneity of schools’ religious exercise. It thereby not only 

respects precedent and protects religious exercise, but also 

affords schools leeway to delineate for themselves the scope of 

the academic teaching corps that embodies their religious 

mission. In contrast to the automatic presumption of religiosity 

that the court adopts today, the Board’s approach adds a 

measure of tailoring at the exemption’s outer edge, eliminating 

needless sacrifice of adjuncts’ NLRA rights but extending the 

exemption to them where called for by a religious role the 

school itself identifies.

I. Background

A. The Implied NLRA Religious-Teacher Exemption

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause “does not 

relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid 

and neutral law of general applicability.” Emp’t Div. v. Smith, 

494 U.S. 872, 879 (1990). The NLRA is such a law. It protects 

employees’ right to organize, join together, and bargain 

collectively with their employers. See 29 U.S.C. § 157. It

defines “employee” without exception for teachers, id. 

§ 152(3), and “employer” without exception for religiously 

affiliated schools, id. § 152(2). In sustaining an NLRA 

bargaining unit of professional opera singers, we quoted the 

Supreme Court’s characterization of “[t]he breadth of § 2(3)’s 

USCA Case #18-1078 Document #1825902 Filed: 01/28/2020 Page 25 of 46
3

definition” of “employee” as “striking.” Seattle Opera v. 

NLRB, 292 F.3d 757, 762 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (quoting Sure-Tan, 

Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U.S. 883, 891 (1984)). “[T]he Act squarely 

applies to ‘any employee.’ The only [textual] limitations are 

specific exemptions for agricultural laborers, domestic 

workers, individuals employed by their spouses or parents, 

individuals employed as independent contractors or 

supervisors, and individuals employed by a person who is not 

an employer under the [Act].” Id. (emphasis omitted). And we 

have been directed to “take care to assure that exemptions from 

NLRA coverage are not so expansively interpreted as to deny 

protection to workers the Act was designed to reach.” Holly 

Farms Corp. v. NLRB, 517 U.S. 392, 399 (1996). 

The Supreme Court implied an NLRA exemption for 

regular parochial high school teachers in Catholic Bishop. See 

440 U.S. at 493 n.5. The exemption sprang from both the 

religious nature of the schools and “the critical and unique role 

of the teacher in fulfilling the mission of a church-operated 

school.” Id. at 501. In view of the teachers’ central role in “the 

propagation of a religious faith,” which is a “raison d’être of 

parochial schools,” id. at 503, the Court sought to avoid the 

constitutional shoals of regulating teachers who are “under 

religious control and discipline,” id. at 501 (quoting Lemon v. 

Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 617 (1971)). Invoking Establishment 

Clause precedent disallowing governmental support to 

parochial schools, the Court thought that collective bargaining 

on behalf of religious-school teachers raised a risk—similar to 

the risk from monitoring public funds—of governmental 

“entanglement with the religious mission of the school.” Id. 

at 502.

Rather than decide that teachers’ exercise of NLRA rights

at a religious high school would violate the First Amendment, 

the Court in Catholic Bishop invoked constitutional avoidance

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4

to read the statute as inapplicable to them. The Court 

acknowledged that the NLRA “defined the Board’s jurisdiction 

in very broad terms,” id. at 504, and that the legislative history 

did not refer to religious schools or their teachers, see id. at 

504-06. The absence of any “clear expression of Congress’

intent to bring teachers in church-operated schools within the 

jurisdiction of the Board,” the Court reasoned, supported 

construing the NLRA not to reach those teachers. Id. at 507.

The Court thus steered clear of “difficult and sensitive 

questions arising out of the guarantees of the First Amendment 

Religion Clauses” that might ensue from collective 

representation of parochial-school teachers. Id.

The Court in Catholic Bishop “offered no test” for 

applying the exemption, Carroll Coll., 558 F.3d at 571, so the 

Board and lower courts worked to differentiate schools whose 

teachers could legitimately be exempted from those whose 

teachers could not. Because the Supreme Court has never

passed on how the size, complexity, heterogeneity, and 

academic freedom that characterize many religious institutions 

of higher education might differentiate them from the parochial 

schools in Catholic Bishop, it has fallen to the appellate courts

to decide how to apply the religious-teacher exemption to 

faculty at religious colleges and universities. 

B. Our NLRA Cases Do Not Address Adjunct Faculty

In Great Falls, we rejected the Board’s attempt to apply

Catholic Bishop through a case-by-case inquiry into “whether 

a religion-affiliated school has a substantial religious 

character.” 278 F.3d at 1339. Instead, we adopted a three-part 

analysis that, in the context of a petitioned-for faculty 

bargaining unit, entitles a school to the Catholic Bishop

exemption if it (1) is “religiously affiliated;” (2) is “nonprofit;” and (3) “holds itself out to the public as religious.” Id. 

USCA Case #18-1078 Document #1825902 Filed: 01/28/2020 Page 27 of 46
5

at 1344-45. The central functions of Great Falls’ holding-out 

test are twofold: First, by accepting a school’s publicly 

communicated religious self-description, it prevents secondguessing the school’s “motives or beliefs” to determine 

whether it has a sufficiently “substantial religious character” to 

claim the Catholic Bishop exemption. Id. at 1344. And, 

second, because “public religious identification . . . comes at a 

cost” to the school claiming it, the unusually deferential 

holding-out inquiry provides “reasonable assurance that the 

Catholic Bishop exemption will not be abused” to exempt 

employees whose NLRA rights should be recognized. Id. 

at 1344-45. We explained that, insofar as entitlement to the 

exemption hinges on a school’s “public religious 

identification,” it is unlikely to be claimed where it is not 

warranted because the avowed religiosity “will no doubt attract 

some students and faculty to the institution,” but “will dissuade 

others.” Id. at 1344. We applied the exemption in Carroll 

College even though the college had not asserted it before the 

Board, reasoning that the exemption is jurisdictional so could 

be “considered on review” even if not “raised before the 

Board.” 558 F.3d at 574.

While Carroll College and Great Falls decided when a 

nonprofit, religiously affiliated university sufficiently “holds 

itself out to the public as a religious institution” to place 

Catholic Bishop’s jurisdictional exemption in play, Great 

Falls, 278 F.3d at 1347, those decisions did not address

whether a bargaining unit composed of temporary, part-time 

adjuncts, like units of other, non-faculty employees of the 

institution, falls beyond that line. Critically, the petitioned-for 

faculty bargaining units we confronted in Carroll College and 

Great Falls expressly excluded adjuncts. See Carroll Coll., 

Inc., 350 N.L.R.B. No. 30 (2007), vacated, 558 F.3d at 575;

Univ. of Great Falls, 331 N.L.R.B. No. 188 (2000), vacated, 

278 F.3d at 1348. The faculty unit at issue in Bayamon—a 

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6

decision that influenced us in Great Falls, see 278 F.3d at 

1342-43—likewise excluded “all part-time teaching 

personnel.” Universidad Cent. de Bayamon, 273 N.L.R.B. 

1110, 1111 (1984), enforcement denied, Universidad Cent. de 

Bayamon v. NLRB, 793 F.2d 383, 403 (1st Cir. 1985) (equally 

divided en banc) (Breyer, J.). Instead, those cases each 

addressed only bargaining units composed of regular faculty, 

i.e., the university bodies most analogous to the parochialschool faculty that Catholic Bishop saw as a conduit for the 

propagation of the faith, so their analyses of institutional 

religiosity and employees’ religious involvement merged in the 

same way as in Catholic Bishop. But no court has previously 

faced a situation where, as here, the proposed bargaining unit 

is composed exclusively of adjunct teachers structurally 

distinct from the main faculty and not held out as playing the 

kind of role in the school’s religious mission that justified the 

faculty exemption in Catholic Bishop.

Because adjuncts often have a very different role from

permanent faculty, it makes sense to treat as distinct the 

question whether adjuncts are exempted. Indeed, the Board has 

long differentiated adjuncts from full faculty, concluding that

“the differences between the full-time and part-time faculty are 

so substantial in most colleges and universities” that certain 

“part-time faculty”—including “adjunct professors”—“do not 

share a community of interest with full-time faculty and, 

therefore, should not be included in the same bargaining unit.” 

N.Y. Univ., 205 N.L.R.B. 4, 6 (1973); see also Kendall Coll. v. 

NLRB, 570 F.2d 216, 219-20 (7th Cir. 1978). Schools employ 

adjuncts in many different ways, and those differences can be 

material to whether recognition of adjuncts’ NLRA rights 

would pose a risk to the university’s religious exercise. Asking 

that the university hold out its adjuncts as part of its religious 

function adequately accounts for any such risk.

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7

The Board’s differentiation of adjuncts from full faculty 

echoes another recognized distinction within university 

teaching ranks that affects NLRA coverage: While permanent

faculty often participate in governance, adjuncts typically do 

not. Thus, in the very first judicial decision applying Catholic 

Bishop to higher education, the divided en banc First Circuit in 

Bayamon stressed that its treatment of religious-university 

faculty accorded with “the existence of other, related 

limitations upon the Labor Board’s jurisdiction over university 

teachers.” 793 F.2d at 398. The NLRA “limitation[]” to which 

Bayamon adverted is the managerial exemption. The faculty 

managerial exemption applies to faculty that participate in 

faculty self-governance by virtue of “various ‘management’ 

prerogatives over appointments, schedules, and curriculum.” 

Bayamon, 793 F.2d at 399 (quoting NLRB v. Yeshiva Univ., 

444 U.S. 672, 690 (1980)); see also Catholic Bishop, 440 U.S. 

at 504-05 (noting Senate Committee’s reference to “a college 

professor’s dispute with the college as an example of 

employer-employee relations not covered by the Act”). In 

Carroll College, we, too, recognized that the faculty we 

exempted under Catholic Bishop were part of the College’s 

“governance structure.” 558 F.3d at 570; see also Great Falls, 

278 F.3d at 1337. 

In the university setting, teachers’ roles vary in ways 

material to their eligibility for collective representation. 

Accordingly, in announcing the managerial-faculty exemption 

in Yeshiva, the Supreme Court expressly acknowledged that 

there might be faculty subgroups “who properly could be 

included in a bargaining unit.” 444 U.S. at 690 n.31 (emphasis 

added). Traditionally, the community of scholars within a 

university that shares governance with the university’s central 

administration comprises full faculty, not adjuncts. In recently 

considering a claim that Yeshiva’s managerial-faculty 

exemption encompasses part-time adjuncts, we echoed 

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8

Yeshiva’s recognition “that faculties are heterogeneous” and

that “non-managerial subsets may exist within a faculty 

entrusted with managerial authority.” Univ. of S. Cal. v. NLRB, 

918 F.3d 126, 129 (D.C. Cir. 2019). In light of those facts, we 

held that the managerial exemption applies to an identified 

subset of the faculty only insofar as “that subgroup is 

structurally included within a collegial faculty body to which 

the university has delegated managerial authority.” Id. at 137. 

The religious-faculty and managerial-faculty exemptions 

are not necessarily coterminous, but references to the 

managerial exemption by courts developing the religious one 

bespeak judicial recognition that university faculties are 

structurally heterogenous, and, as Bayamon pointed out when 

it first extended Catholic Bishop to higher education, most fulltime university faculty were already exempted as managerial. 

In short, neither the holdings nor the logic of the religiousteacher exemption cases requires uniform exemption of 

“teachers of any sort,” Maj. Op. at 15, based on the 

unsupported (and often inaccurate) presumption that every 

religious educational institution’s adjuncts have the same 

relationship to the school’s religious exercise as does its regular

faculty.

There are powerful practical and institutional reasons why 

adjuncts need not and should not automatically be equated with 

regular faculty under Catholic Bishop, but may fall closer to 

non-faculty employees for purposes of NLRA jurisdiction. 

The image many lawyers and judges have of an adjunct as a 

salaried or retired professional who moonlights as a law-school

professor bears little resemblance to the circumstances of most 

adjuncts—especially those for whom NLRA rights matter 

most. Many adjuncts are trained academics seeking 

opportunities for full faculty status in their chosen disciplines. 

See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-18-49, Contingent 

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9

Workforce: Size, Characteristics, Compensation, and Work 

Experiences of Adjunct and Other Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

14, 24-25 (Oct. 2017) (GAO Report). They fill many 

“postsecondary instructional positions,” id. at 10, yet their 

terms of employment often leave them with little time, space, 

or opportunity for interaction with students outside of class, 

with the institution’s staff or full-time faculty, or with broader 

campus life and institutional mission, id. at 32, 47-49; see also 

Am. Ass’n for Univ. Professors, Contingent Appointments and 

the Academic Profession 173 (rev. 2014). 

A 2017 governmental report found that more than half of 

the nearly one million contingent teaching positions 

nationwide “are part-time and have less-than annual contracts 

or lack faculty status,” making them among the “least stable” 

type of academic appointment. GAO Report at 12-13. The 

report concluded that the “[p]art-time contingent faculty” it 

surveyed earned “about 75 percent less per course” than other 

instructors, id. at 35—with median annual earnings falling well 

below $10,000, see id. at 34 tbl.5; see also Coal. on the Acad. 

Workforce, A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members 2, 10-12 

(June 2012)—and that far fewer than half of part-time adjuncts 

received retirement, health, and life insurance benefits from 

their employment, see GAO Report at 39.

The Duquesne adjuncts at issue here are no exception. 

Notably, the Executive Resolutions of Duquesne’s Board 

define “adjunct professors” as among the Auxiliary 

Instructional Staff, who are “not members of the Faculty” and 

“not entitled to Faculty benefits except to the extent these are 

granted in the letter of appointment.” J.A. 737 (emphasis 

added). (Duquesne’s bylaws provide that its Executive 

Resolutions supersede the faculty handbook, see J.A. 397, to 

which the majority refers, see Maj. Op. at 14-15.) The adjuncts 

have no campus offices and no role in faculty governance. See 

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J.A. 74 (“Adjuncts are not provided with their own office 

space.”), 770 (“Adjunct faculty members do not have voting 

privileges . . . .”), 780 (defining Faculty Senate, consisting of 

full-time faculty, as “the deliberative body, the voice, and the 

primary agent of faculty involvement in University 

governance”). Department heads at Duquesne contract with 

adjuncts on a decentralized, per-course, per-semester basis. 

See J.A. 72. “As a rule, adjuncts are responsible only for 

teaching,” J.A. 770; see also J.A. 737, often handling 

“[i]ntroductory language” and “skills courses” to free up “fulltime faculty to teach theme courses,” J.A. 926. The only record 

evidence of Duquesne’s adjunct compensation shows a 2011 

payment of $2,556 for a semester-long, three-credit English

course, J.A. 1109, consistent with national data on adjunct pay 

at the college level, see Coal. on the Acad. Workforce at 10. 

In sum, the terms of employment of adjuncts make clear 

that they are not necessarily equivalent to the permanent

faculty exempt under Carroll College, Great Falls, and

Catholic Bishop. Recognizing potentially material differences, 

the Board set out in Pacific Lutheran to adapt the holding-out 

test we adopted in Great Falls to this new employee group. 

II. The Board’s Approach 

A. Pacific Lutheran University

The Board in Pacific Lutheran recognized that whether 

and how Catholic Bishop’s exemption applies to adjunct 

teachers at religiously affiliated universities presented an open 

question of substantial importance, so it took up the issue in an 

especially open and deliberative way. The Board “issued a 

notice and invitation to file briefs . . . to the parties as well as 

the general public.” 361 N.L.R.B. at 1405. Its notice elicited 

comments on the series of questions it had posed and prompted 

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“a broad range of interested parties [to] file[] briefs in response 

to the Board’s invitation.” Id. at 1405 & n.3.

In developing the test it applied here, the Board in Pacific 

Lutheran acknowledged that it had to “accommodate two 

competing interests”: First, it must respect the First 

Amendment’s Religion Clauses and the cases applying them to 

religious schools, “avoid[ing] any intrusive inquiry into the 

character or sincerity of a university’s religious views;” and, 

second, it must “protect[] workers’ exercise of their rights

under the [NLRA] to the fullest permissible extent” consistent 

with the Religion Clauses. Id. at 1406. Guided by Great Falls, 

the Board held that Catholic Bishop’s exemption would reach 

adjuncts teaching secular subjects, provided the university

(1) “holds itself out as providing a religious educational 

environment,” and (2) “holds out” the adjuncts “as performing 

a specific role in creating or maintaining the university’s 

religious purpose or mission.” Id. at 1410-11. Thus, for a 

religious university to exempt its adjunct faculty, it need only 

publicly make clear that it assigns them a religious role. 

By adapting our non-intrusive “holding out” approach 

from Great Falls to the question whether adjuncts count as 

“faculty” for purposes of the Catholic Bishop exemption, the 

Board explicitly eschewed any “second-guessing” of 

religiosity. Id. at 1412. The Board rejected the test preferred 

by the union in that case, which would have looked beyond 

schools’ public representations of adjuncts’ religious role to 

demand evidence that “teachers in the proposed unit perform 

religious functions as part of their jobs.” Id. at 1408. The 

Board refused that test out of concern that its “examination of 

the actual functions performed by employees could raise the 

same First Amendment concerns as an examination of the 

university’s actual beliefs,” which we had rejected in Great 

Falls. Id. at 1411. Instead, the Board held:

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[W]e shall decline jurisdiction if the university “holds 

out” [the adjunct faculty in the proposed bargaining 

unit], in communications to current or potential 

students and faculty members, and the community at 

large, as performing a specific role in creating or 

maintaining the university’s religious purpose or 

mission. As the D.C. Circuit explained in Great Falls, 

the “holding out” requirement eliminates the need for 

a university to explain its beliefs, avoids asking how 

effective the university is at inculcating its beliefs, and 

does not “coerce[] an educational institution into 

altering its religious mission to meet regulatory 

demands.” 278 F.3d at 1344-1345.

Pac. Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1411. The Board stressed that 

it would “rely on the institution’s own statements about 

whether” the school’s religious identity shaped the teachers’ 

roles “without questioning the institution’s good faith or 

otherwise second-guessing those statements.” Id. at 1412.

The Board reasoned that taking at face value the 

university’s representations about adjuncts’ religious role 

would respect religious exercise but guard against unsupported 

use of the exemption. The Board’s approach dovetails with 

both the substantive protection of religious rights under 

Catholic Bishop and the process by which we implemented that 

protection in Great Falls, where we explained that relying on 

the school’s public “holding out” rather than the Board’s 

investigation into the school’s religious functions avoided 

entanglement. See 278 F.3d at 1344. We were satisfied in 

Great Falls that the holding-out approach notifies prospective 

faculty of their role in a school’s religious environment and, by 

requiring “public religious identification,” provides some 

assurance that the exemption is warranted. Id.

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The Board in Pacific Lutheran identified the key “holding 

out” evidence for adjuncts as “documents concerning the 

recruitment of future staff” that would notify applicants that

“performance of their faculty responsibilities would require 

furtherance of the college or university’s religious mission.” 

361 N.L.R.B. at 1412. This deferential approach asks nothing 

more of the religious institution than that it hold out its adjuncts 

as playing a role in creating or maintaining its religious 

mission. It extends the Catholic Bishop exemption to adjuncts 

only where a university intends and publicly represents that its 

adjuncts play such role.

The Board in Pacific Lutheran calibrated its approach to 

give a wider berth to schools’ religious freedom than did the 

inquiry the Supreme Court established in Hosanna-Tabor 

Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 

(2012), to decide the related question of which teachers qualify 

for a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination 

laws. The Board recounted that the Court in Hosanna-Tabor

“did not simply accept the school’s assertion that the teacher 

was a minister,” but “found it appropriate, for the purposes of 

applying [the] ministerial exception, to evaluate the teacher’s 

functions to determine whether the exception applied.” Pac.

Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1413-14. In deciding whether a 

“called teacher” at a religious school fell within the judicially 

implied “ministerial exception” to federal employment 

discrimination laws, the Court in Hosanna-Tabor started with 

the same kind of question the Board posed in Pacific Lutheran: 

whether the employer “held . . . out” the teacher as a minister.

565 U.S. at 178, 190-91. Justice Thomas would have stopped 

there and held the exception applied on that basis alone. See 

id. at 196-98 (Thomas, J., concurring). The rest of the Court, 

however, proceeded to ask whether the plaintiff also “held 

herself out as a minister of the Church by accepting the formal 

call to religious service,” id. at 191, and probed beyond such 

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public representations to examine “the circumstances of [her] 

employment,” id. at 190, including “the important religious 

functions she performed for the Church,” id. at 192.

Hosanna-Tabor involved a different judicially fashioned 

exemption from a different federal statute, but responded to 

parallel First Amendment concerns. It thus suggests that the 

Board’s own approach in Pacific Lutheran, which was 

substantially more deferential to religious schools than the 

Supreme Court’s inquiry in Hosanna-Tabor, gives ample

protection to school leadership’s free-exercise rights. 

B. Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit 

No party in Pacific Lutheran petitioned this court for 

review, and the Board has since applied its adjunct-specific 

holding-out test in other cases, including this one. See Maj. 

Op. at 13 n.1. Adjuncts at Duquesne’s McAnulty College and 

Graduate School of Liberal Arts voted overwhelmingly in 

favor of the union, see J.A. 14, and Duquesne initially 

stipulated to an election agreement, see J.A. 68, but later 

changed course to assert that its adjuncts are jurisdictionally 

exempt under Catholic Bishop, see J.A. 68-69 & n.5. 

After receiving evidence and argument on Pacific 

Lutheran’s application, the Regional Director determined that 

Duquesne does not “hold[] out its adjunct professors who are 

members of the petitioned-for bargaining unit as serving any 

role in creating or maintaining the [University’s] religious 

educational environment.” J.A. 78. (The Board later amended 

the allowed bargaining unit to exclude the adjuncts teaching in 

the religion department. See J.A. 138-139.) “While there is 

voluminous evidence in the record concerning [Duquesne’s]

religious identity and its stated Mission,” the Regional Director 

found, “there is scant evidence that adjuncts are expected to act 

in any way to advance the [University’s] religious message or 

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to do anything with regard to it, other than to not be openly 

hostile to it.” J.A. 77. There was, in particular, a “lack of 

evidence that adjuncts are informed of any requirement of 

participation with respect to conveying or supporting 

[Duquesne’s] mission.” J.A. 78. The adjunct job 

announcements, employment contracts, interviews, and other 

aspects of Duquesne’s adjunct hiring process did not mention 

any religious role, duties, or relation of the adjuncts to the 

school’s religious mission. See J.A. 72-74. 

At bottom, reasonable adjunct candidates “would not 

conclude that any religious responsibilities were required by 

their job duties” with Duquesne. J.A. 78. The Regional 

Director noted that the adjuncts were undoubtedly aware that 

Duquesne is a Catholic school, but found that such “awareness 

is not the equivalent of contributing to” or “advocating for” the 

school’s religious character or identity, and Duquesne “makes 

no claim that the adjunct instructors . . . play any role in 

contributing to the University’s mission or religious 

environment.” J.A. 77.

Whether Duquesne’s adjuncts fall within Catholic 

Bishop’s constitutional-avoidance-based religious-teacher 

exemption is the only issue properly before us under 29 U.S.C. 

§ 160(e), because Duquesne never claimed to the agency that

the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1,

“provides a separate and independent basis” to deny NLRA 

protection, Pet’r Br. 52. 

III. Pacific Lutheran Applies the NLRA Consistently with 

Religion-Clause Precedent 

A. Where We Agree and Disagree

Although I believe the majority errs in invalidating the 

Board’s holding-out methodology for deciding when adjunct 

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teachers at religious schools fall within Catholic Bishop’s

exemption from the NLRA, our disagreement is relatively 

narrow. I note especially three areas of substantial agreement. 

First, Duquesne does not claim, and the court does not 

rule, that Catholic Bishop exempts all employees of a religious 

school from NLRA coverage. Duquesne acknowledges that 

Great Falls applies only to “faculty,” Pet’r Br. 28, and that 

Duquesne itself “collectively bargains with unions 

representing non-faculty staff,” id. at 2. My colleagues, too, 

limit their decision to teachers—albeit “teachers of any sort.” 

Maj. Op. at 15; see id. at 23 (not addressing “cases involving 

religious schools and their non-faculty employees”).

Indeed, no court has understood Catholic Bishop to 

exempt all staff of any religious “institution” or “school” from 

the NLRA. See Passaic Daily News v. NLRB, 736 F.2d 1543, 

1556 n.20 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (“In Catholic Bishop, the only 

question the Court addressed was whether the [NLRA] 

conferred jurisdiction over teachers who taught both religious 

and secular subjects in church operated schools.”); see also 

Volunteers of Am., L.A. v. NLRB, 777 F.2d 1386, 1389-90 (9th 

Cir. 1985) (not reading Catholic Bishop to exempt employees 

of church-operated “alcohol treatment centers”); NLRB v. 

Salvation Army of Mass. Dorchester Day Care Ctr., 763 F.2d 

1, 6 (1st Cir. 1985) (same, as to church-operated day care center 

employees); VOA-Minn.-Bar None Boys Ranch v. NLRB, 752 

F.2d 345, 348-49 (8th Cir. 1985) (same, as to employees of a 

church-operated residential treatment center); Denver Post of 

the Nat’l Soc’y of the Volunteers of Am. v. NLRB, 732 F.2d 769, 

772-73 (10th Cir. 1984) (same, as to employees at a religious 

organization’s temporary shelter for women and children),

overruled on other grounds by Aramark Corp. v. NLRB, 179 

F.3d 872, 874 & n.2 (10th Cir. 1999); St. Elizabeth Hosp. v. 

NLRB, 715 F.2d 1193, 1196 (7th Cir. 1983) (same, as to a 

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religiously affiliated hospital’s employees); Tressler Lutheran 

Home for Children v. NLRB, 677 F.2d 302, 305 (3d Cir. 1982)

(same, as to a church-affiliated nursing home’s employees). 

Instead, courts have uniformly understood Catholic Bishop’s

application to turn on the “critical and unique role of the teacher 

in fulfilling the mission of a church-operated school,” 440 U.S. 

at 501, and not to extend to all employees of religiously 

affiliated or managed institutions. See, e.g., Denver Post, 732 

F.2d at 773 (citing Tressler, 677 F.2d at 305); NLRB v. St. Louis 

Christian Home, 663 F.2d 60, 63-64 (8th Cir. 1981); NLRB v. 

Bishop Ford Cent. Catholic High Sch., 623 F.2d 818, 822 (2d 

Cir. 1980).

I read our prior cases’ references to the “institution,” Great 

Falls, 278 F.3d at 1347, and the “school,” Carroll Coll., 

558 F.3d at 572, to decide only whether the entity is 

sufficiently religious such that teachers in roles comparable to 

those in Catholic Bishop fall outside the NLRA. Those cases 

considered only the main faculty body—the same body 

exempted in Catholic Bishop—and we passed on the school’s

eligibility for the religious-teacher exemption without 

addressing bargaining units beyond the main faculty. 

Second, there is no dispute within our panel that today’s 

decision interprets an NLRA-specific exemption and does not 

limit the applicability of any other workplace laws to religiousschool teachers, much less to any other staff. The majority 

affirms that its opinion does not “address the powers of other 

agencies in cases involving different statutes or constitutional 

provisions.” Maj. Op. at 23. As already discussed, although 

the judicially implied “ministerial exemption” responds to 

concerns similar to those that animated Catholic Bishop, it 

operates in a more functionally tailored way, and is a waivable 

affirmative defense, not a jurisdictional bar. See HosannaTabor, 565 U.S. at 195 n.4. Similarly, the more limited 

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exemption of religious organizations from Title VII’s 

prohibition of religious discrimination is explicit in the text of 

that statute, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1(a); see also Corp. of the 

Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day 

Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327, 339 (1987), and does not purport 

to strip employees of NLRA coverage or any other workplace 

rights, including protection against discrimination on grounds

other than religion. We should take care to avoid suggesting 

that cases such as these support exempting entire “religious 

organizations” from workplace regulation. Cf. Maj. Op. at 2, 

6-7, 18-19.

Third, my colleagues and I agree that a religious school 

should be able to decide that its adjunct faculty are not

encompassed within the Catholic Bishop exemption. As the 

majority puts it, “whether the Board could exercise jurisdiction 

over a religious school that formally and affirmatively 

disclaims any religious role for certain faculty members” 

remains an open question. Maj. Op. at 19 n.2. Thus, at the end 

of the day, our difference may boil down to defining the default 

rule: In my view, the Board appropriately treated the Catholic 

Bishop exemption as presumptively limited to the regular 

faculty unless the school holds out its adjuncts as playing a like 

religious role, whereas the majority deems “teachers of any 

sort” automatically exempt, but suggests those adjuncts might 

have NLRA rights if their school “affirmatively disclaims” any 

religious role for them. 

I would affirm the Board’s approach because, as we 

described in Great Falls, a key role of the holding-out 

requirement was to “provide[] reasonable assurance that the 

Catholic Bishop exemption will not be abused.” 278 F.3d 

at 1345. The purpose of preventing over-claiming of the 

exemption is served by the Board’s placement of the holdingout burden on the school. As a practical matter, it seems natural 

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that a religious university that stands to benefit from a blanket 

exemption might do nothing rather than make the disclaimer as 

to its adjuncts. That seems especially likely where its

alternative is to “formally and affirmatively disclaim[] any 

religious role” for its adjuncts—a step that a religious school 

that does not cast its adjuncts in a religious role but still hopes 

to attract them may not want to take. The Board’s contrary 

default rule, while highly deferential of religious schools’ First 

Amendment rights, is better designed to deter an institution 

from treating as exempt adjuncts who should not be. 

The exemption’s jurisdictional character further supports

requiring the school to invoke rather than disclaim the 

exemption for its adjuncts. The majority does not explain how 

even a formal and affirmative disclaimer would be effective to 

waive a jurisdictional exemption. But we assuredly can give 

religious schools that choice—and avoid ascribing religiosity 

where a religious school itself did not—if we recognize that the 

exemption’s application beyond the core faculty depends on 

the school affirmatively holding out adjuncts in a way that 

justifies the exemption’s application to them.

Pacific Lutheran is not fairly characterized as 

“incompatib[le] with the Religion Clauses.” Maj. Op. at 22. 

The Board’s Pacific Lutheran test asks whether an objective 

observer would understand the university’s own 

communications to “hold out” the employees it seeks to exempt 

as having a role in “creating or maintaining the university’s 

religious purpose or mission.” 361 N.L.R.B. at 1411. There is 

nothing unconstitutional about making a religious university’s 

eligibility for an implied statutory exemption turn on such a 

holding-out inquiry. See Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 190-92

(relying in part on an employee-specific holding-out inquiry); 

Great Falls, 278 F.3d at 1344 (considering whether a school 

“holds itself out to the public as religious”).

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B. Pacific Lutheran’s Default Rule Respects Precedent

and Religious Freedom

The grounding of the Catholic Bishop exemption in 

constitutional avoidance, notwithstanding the NLRA’s plain 

text defining “employee” and “employer” without exception 

for teachers at religiously affiliated schools, supports the 

relatively circumspect approach the Board took in Pacific 

Lutheran. The Board recognized the exemption of all 

permanent faculty of any school that qualifies as religious 

under Catholic Bishop, Great Falls, and Carroll College, but 

decided against automatically sweeping in all short-term, parttime adjuncts. See Pac. Lutheran, 361 N.L.R.B. at 1410-13. 

Rather, the Board recognized the exemption of adjuncts only 

where the university “holds out” its adjuncts as playing a 

religious role—but in doing so it used a highly deferential, 

easy-to-meet standard. See id. As already explained, that 

additional holding-out requirement is warranted given that 

adjuncts and full faculty frequently play materially different 

roles in higher education, and thus may not equally implicate a

school’s religious exercise.

One need not question the holding of Catholic Bishop to 

appreciate that, given its reliance on now-disfavored methods

of discerning statutory meaning and employing constitutional 

avoidance, we should hesitate to expand its reach. Catholic 

Bishop identified no relevant ambiguity in the NLRA’s “very 

broad terms,” 440 U.S. at 504, nor any suggestion (beyond 

silence) in the legislative history that Congress intended to 

exclude teachers at religious schools from the Act’s coverage, 

see id. at 504-06. The Court has recently reiterated that the 

canon of constitutional avoidance “is a tool for choosing 

between competing plausible interpretations of a provision” 

that “‘has no application’ in the interpretation of an 

unambiguous statute.” McFadden v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 

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2298, 2307 (2015) (quoting Warger v. Shauers, 574 U.S. 40, 

50 (2014)). And because “silence in the legislative history 

cannot” alter a statute’s explicit terms, Encino Motorcars, LLC 

v. Navarro, 138 S. Ct. 1134, 1143 (2018), the NLRA legislative 

history’s mere failure to mention religious schools does not 

support building out Catholic Bishop’s constitutionalavoidance construction. 

The Supreme Court has also more recently described the 

constitutional shoals that Catholic Bishop sought to avoid as 

less monolithic than there described. Catholic Bishop worked 

from the premise that “[r]eligious authority necessarily 

pervades” even the apparently secular aspects of parochial 

schools. 440 U.S. at 501 (quoting Lemon, 403 U.S. at 617). 

But the Court has updated that “antiquated” view with a more 

nuanced recognition that not every function of a religious 

school necessarily instantiates the school’s religiosity. 

Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 223 (1997); see also 

Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793, 858 (2000) (O’Connor, J.,

joined by Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment of the 

plurality). The Court’s longstanding recognition that religion 

is less likely to “permeate the area of secular education” in 

“church-related colleges and universities” than in “primary and 

secondary schools,” Hunt v. McNair, 413 U.S. 734, 746 (1973) 

(quoting Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 687 (1971) 

(Burger, C.J.) (plurality opinion)), further suggests that Pacific 

Lutheran’s decision to treat adjuncts at religious institutions of 

higher education as not automatically exempt, but exempted 

where the school holds out its adjuncts as helping to create or 

promote its religious mission, does not raise the same serious 

constitutional questions that Catholic Bishop contemplated.

The Board’s decision to require that a religious university 

affords clear notice to adjuncts that it casts them in a role of 

religious significance is especially warranted given the unusual 

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character of this exemption. It does not depend on any claim 

on the school’s part that collective representation contravenes 

its faith. And it reachesteachers without regard to whether they 

are members of the faith, or even held out as furthering the 

school’s religious mission. The Catholic Bishop exemption is 

thus unlike the express Title VII exemption, 42 U.S.C. 

§ 2000e-1(a), which merely allows religious organizations to 

favor co-religionists. It is also unlike the ministerial 

exemption, which removes antidiscrimination protections from 

a subgroup of employees who work as “ministers”—i.e., coreligionists of a faith-based employer who perform “important 

religious functions” for it. Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 192. 

The exemption Duquesne claims here applies to adjuncts not 

cast as “ministers,” and who are hired without regard to their 

religion. See J.A. 72, 752-753, 755. It removes their NLRA 

coverage on the premise that their teaching, regardless of its 

advertised character and regardless of how the university holds 

them out, carries undisclosed religious agency for the 

university’s leadership with which collective representation 

might interfere.

The majority’s categorical application is less respectful of 

individuals’ religious liberty than is the Board’s more nuanced 

approach. The exemption casts the adjuncts as instruments of 

the Spiritan Catholic faith, notwithstanding that the adjuncts’ 

own internal motivation and understanding of the value of 

teaching at Duquesne could be secular or even inspired by a 

different faith. It is a hallmark of the religious and intellectual 

pluralism and freedom of our society and our workplaces—

especially in universities and other institutions of higher 

education—that people work together peacefully and 

productively, fulfill shared expectations, and inspire one 

another, even as they act with and for distinct and even 

conflicting reasons, whether secular, religious, or both. Given 

that reality, the Board does not ask too much in Pacific 

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Lutheran by requiring that a religious university claiming the 

exemption of its adjuncts put them on notice that their work 

will be treated as instrumental to their employer’s faith.

The majority’s categorical application is also less 

respectful of the religious freedom of religious schools than is 

the Board’s more nuanced approach. An automatic, blanket 

exemption does not recognize that religious institutions of 

higher education are not all religious in the same way, and that 

those differences in how they define their religious 

communities are central to religious pluralism and therefore 

religious liberty. Unlike a jurisdictional presumption that all 

adjuncts at every religious school function like the parochialschool teachers in Catholic Bishop, the Board’s acceptance of 

each religious university’s public representations as to whether 

and how adjunct faculty play a role in its religious identity is 

more respectful of universities’ religious freedom and thus 

better comports with the Free Exercise Clause.

Not every religious school’s religious character 

necessarily requires that its adjuncts leave their NLRA rights 

at the door. A holding that presumes as a jurisdictional matter 

that all genuinely religious universities have no labor law 

coverage for their adjuncts imposes a fixed religious footprint 

at corresponding cost on every religious school, including 

schools that may not want, and adjuncts who may not have 

expected, that cost. Because I conclude that the Board’s 

answer to the open question whether Catholic Bishop applies 

to adjunct teachers at religious schools better protects the 

religious liberty the First Amendment secures and more 

faithfully follows the NLRA’s broad, remedial scheme, I

respectfully dissent.

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