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Page Number: 40

4 

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE SCHOOL v. 
MORRISSEY-BERRU 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

This  focus  on  leadership  led  to  a  consistent  conclusion: 
Lay faculty, even those who teach religion at church-affili-
ated schools, are not “ministers.”  In Geary v. Visitation of 
Blessed Virgin Mary Parish School, 7 F. 3d 324 (1993), for 
instance, the Third Circuit rejected a Catholic school’s view 
that  “[t]he  unique  and  important  role  of  the  elementary 
school teacher in the Catholic education system” barred a
teacher’s discrimination claim under the First Amendment. 
Id.,  at  331.  In  Dole  v.  Shenandoah  Baptist  Church,  899 
F. 2d  1389  (1990),  the  Fourth  Circuit  found  a  materially 
similar  statutory  ministerial  exception  inapplicable  to 
teachers who taught “all classes” “from a pervasively reli-
gious  perspective,”  “le[d]”  their  “students  in  prayer,”  and 
were “required to subscribe to [a church] statement of faith
as a condition of employment.”  Id., at 1396.  Similar exam-
ples  abound.    See,  e.g.,  EEOC  v.  Mississippi  College,  626 
F. 2d 477, 479, 485 (CA5 1980) (ministerial exception inap-
plicable to faculty members of a Baptist college that “con-
ceive[d] of education as an integral part of its Christian mis-
sion”  and  “expected”  faculty  “to  serve  as  exemplars  of
practicing Christians”); EEOC v. Fremont Christian School, 
781 F. 2d 1362, 1369–1370 (CA9 1986) (ministerial excep-
tion inapplicable to teachers whom a church considered as 
performing “an integral part of the religious mission of the 
Church  to  its  children”);  cf.  Rayburn,  772  F. 2d,  at  1168 
(“Lay ministries, even in leadership roles within a congre-
gation, do not compare to the institutional selection for hire
of one member with special theological training to lead oth-
ers”). 

Hosanna-Tabor did not upset this consensus.  Instead, it 
recognized the ministerial exception’s roots in protecting re-
ligious  “elections”  for  “ecclesiastical  offices”  and  guarding
the freedom to “select” titled “clergy” and churchwide lead-
ers.  565  U. S.,  at  182,  184,  186–187  (internal  quotation 
marks omitted).  To be sure, the Court stated that the “min-
isterial  exception  is  not  limited  to  the  head  of  a  religious