Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-267_1an2.pdf
Page Number: 44

8 

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

state-church  entanglement  while  avoiding  an  overbroad 
carve-out from employment protections. 

II 
Until today, no court had held that the ministerial excep-
tion applies with disputed facts like these and lay teachers
like respondents, let alone at the summary-judgment stage. 
See 911 F. 3d 603, 610 (CA9 2018) (case below in No. 19–
348); see also supra, at 3–4. 
  Only by rewriting Hosanna-Tabor does the Court reach a 
different  result.    The  Court  starts  with  an  unremarkable 
view: that Hosanna-Tabor’s “recognition of the significance 
of ” the first three “factors” in that case “did not mean that 
they  must  be  met—or  even  that  they  are  necessarily  im-
portant—in all other cases.”  Ante, at 16–17.  True enough.
One can easily imagine religions incomparable to those at 
issue in Hosanna-Tabor and here.  But then the Court re-
casts Hosanna-Tabor itself: Apparently, the touchstone all 
along was a two-Justice concurrence.  To that concurrence, 
“[w]hat  matter[ed]”  was  “the  religious  function  that
[Perich] performed” and her “functional status.”  Hosanna-
Tabor,  565  U. S.,  at  206  (opinion  of  ALITO,  J.).  Today’s
Court yields to the concurrence’s view with identical rheto-
ric.  “What  matters,”  the  Court  echoes,  “is  what  an  em-
ployee does.”  Ante, at 18. 

But this vague statement is no easier to comprehend to-
day than it was when the Court declined to adopt it eight 
years ago.  It certainly does not sound like a legal frame-
work.  Rather,  the  Court  insists  that  a  “religious  institu-
tion’s explanation of the role of [its] employees in the life of
the religion in question is important.”  Ante, at 22; see also 

—————— 
the titles (“clergy” and “rabbi”), the training required to obtain those ti-
tles, and the time spent on religious activity (“almost all” of one’s time). 
Ibid.  It should be equally obvious that someone who spends a sliver of
time reading, writing, or teaching about religion does not automatically
become a minister of that religion.