Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-267_1an2.pdf
Page Number: 55.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

19 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

were  sufficient  to  establish  a  teacher  as  a  minister  of  the 
church within the meaning of the ministerial exception, the 
Supreme Court would have had no need for most of its dis-
cussion in Hosanna-Tabor.”  Brief for EEOC as Amicus Cu-
riae in No. 17–55180 (CA9), p. 21.  Rather, “the Court made 
clear  in  Hosanna-Tabor  that  context  matters.”  Ibid.  In-
deed.8 

Were there any doubt left about the proper result here,
recall that neither school has shown that it required its re-
ligion teachers to be Catholic.  The Court does not explain 
how the schools here can show, or have shown, that a non-
Catholic “personif[ies]” Catholicism or leads the faith.  Ho-
sanna-Tabor, 565 U. S., at 188.  Instead, the Court remarks 
that a “rigid” coreligionist requirement might “not always 
be  easy”  to  apply  to  faiths  like  Judaism  or  variations  of 
Protestantism.  Ante,  at  25–26.  Perhaps.  But  that  has 
nothing to do with Catholicism. 

Pause, for a moment, on the Court’s conclusion: Even if 
the teachers were not Catholic, and even if they were for-
bidden to participate in the church’s sacramental worship,
they would nonetheless be “ministers” of the Catholic faith
simply because of their supervisory role over students in a 
religious school.  That stretches the law and logic past their 
breaking points.  (Indeed, it is ironic that Our Lady of Gua-
dalupe School seeks complete immunity for age discrimina-
tion  when  its  teacher  handbook  promised  not  to  discrimi-
nate on that basis.)  As the Government once put it, even 
when a school has a “pervasively religious atmosphere,” its
faculty  are  unlikely  ministers  when  “there  is  no  require-
ment  that  its  teachers  even  be  members  of  [its]  religious 
denomination.”  Brief  for  Appellee  in  No.  84–2779  (CA9 

—————— 

8 Although the Government supported Biel below, it has since switched
sides  without  explanation.    Odder  still,  the  Government’s  brief  to  this 
Court  faults  the  Ninth  Circuit  for  having  embraced  the  Government’s 
prior views.  Compare Brief for EEOC as Amicus Curiae in No. 17–55180 
(CA9), p. 21, with Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16–17.