Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-267_1an2.pdf
Page Number: 27

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

23 

Opinion of the Court 

The Ninth Circuit’s rigid test produced a distorted anal-
ysis.  First, it invested undue significance in the fact that 
Morrissey-Berru and Biel did not have clerical titles.  769 
Fed. Appx., at 460; 911 F. 3d, at 608–609; Post, at 15–16.  It 
is true that Perich’s title included the term “minister,” but 
we never said that her title (or her reference to herself as a 
“minister”) was necessary to trigger the Hosanna-Tabor ex-
ception.  Instead,  “those  considerations  . . .  merely  made
Perich’s  case  an  especially  easy  one.”    Brief  for  United 
States  as  Amicus  Curiae  19.  Moreover,  both  Morrissey-
Berru and Biel had titles.  They were Catholic elementary 
school teachers, which meant that they were their students’ 
primary  teachers  of  religion.    The  concept  of  a  teacher  of 
religion  is  loaded  with  religious  significance.    The  term 
“rabbi”  means  teacher,  and  Jesus  was  frequently  called 
rabbi.27    And  if  a  more  esoteric  title  is  needed,  they  were 

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the exception if he or she “simply relay[s] religious tenets” without “ ‘min-
ister[ing] to the faithful.’ ”  Post, at 7.  Hosanna-Tabor never adopted this 
unworkable test.  It did not suggest that the exception it recognized ap-
plied only to “leaders.”  Post, at 4–5, and n. 1.  The term is never used in 
the opinion of the Court.  Insisting on leadership as a qualification would 
shrink the exception even more than respondents advocate.  For exam-
ple, they agree that it should apply to nuns, see Brief for Respondents 
21, but, under the dissent’s test, is every cloistered nun—or every clois-
tered monk—disqualified?  And even if leadership were a requirement, 
why couldn’t a religious teacher be regarded as a leader of the students
in the class? 

Nor did our opinion in Hosanna-Tabor draw a critical distinction be-
tween a person who “simply relay[s] religious tenets” and one who relays 
such  tenets  while  also  “ ‘minister[ing]  to  the  faithful.’ ”    Post,  at  7.  A 
teacher, such as an instructor in a class on world religions, who merely
provides a description of the beliefs and practices of a religion without
making any effort to inculcate those beliefs could not qualify for the ex-
ception, but otherwise the distinction makes no sense.  If a member of 
the Christian clergy or a rabbi spends almost all of his or her time stud-
ying Scripture or theology and writing instead of ministering to a con-
gregation, would that individual fall outside the exception as understood 
by the dissent?

27 See, e.g., Mark 9:5, 11:21; John 1:38, 3:26, 4:31, 6:25, 9:2.