Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/483/327/case.php
Timestamp: 2019-11-17 19:46:06
Document Index: 142616602

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2000', '§ 702', '§ 1252', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§702', '§ 702', '§ 702', '§ 702']

Section 702 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 255, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1, exempts religious organizations from Title VII's prohibition against discrimination in employment on the basis of religion. [Footnote 1] The question presented chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 330
is whether applying the § 702 exemption to the secular nonprofit activities of religious organizations violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The District Court held that it does, and these cases are here on direct appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1252. [Footnote 2] We reverse.
Appellee Mayson worked at the Gymnasium for some 16 years as an assistant building engineer and then as building engineer. He was discharged in 1981 because he failed to qualify for a temple recommend, that is, a certificate that he is a member of the Church and eligible to attend its temples. [Footnote 4] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 331
The District Court first considered whether the facts of these cases require a decision on the plaintiffs' constitutional argument. Starting from the premise that the religious activities of religious employers can permissibly be exempted under § 702, the court developed a three-part test to determine whether an activity is religious. [Footnote 6] Applying this test to chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 332
Mayson's situation, the court found: first, that the Gymnasium is intimately connected to the Church financially and in matters of management; second, that there is no clear connection between the primary function which the Gymnasium performs and the religious beliefs and tenets of the Mormon Church or church administration; [Footnote 7] and third, that none of Mayson's duties at the Gymnasium are "even tangentially related to any conceivable religious belief or ritual of the Mormon Church or church administration," 594 F.Supp. 791, 802 (Utah 1984). The court concluded that Mayson's case involves nonreligious activity. [Footnote 8]
594 F. Supp, at 812. [Footnote 9] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 333
The court concluded, however, that § 702 fails the second part of the Lemon test because the provision has the primary effect of advancing religion. [Footnote 10] Among the considerations mentioned by the court were: that § 702 singles out religious entities for a benefit, rather than benefiting a broad grouping of which religious organizations are only a part; [Footnote 11] that § 702 is not supported by long historical tradition; [Footnote 12] and that § 702 burdens the free exercise rights of employees of religious institutions who work in nonreligious jobs. Finding that § 702 impermissibly sponsors religious organizations by granting them "an exclusive authorization to engage in conduct which can directly and immediately advance religious tenets and practices," id. at 825, the court declared the statute unconstitutional as applied to secular activity. The court entered summary judgment in favor of Mayson pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), and ordered him reinstated with backpay. [Footnote 13] Subsequently, the court vacated its judgment chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 334
so that the United States could intervene to defend the constitutionality of § 702. After further briefing and argument, the court affirmed its prior determination and reentered a final judgment for Mayson.
Walz v. Tax Comm'n, 397 U. S. 664, 397 U. S. 673 (1970). There is ample room under the Establishment Clause for "benevolent neutrality which will permit religious exercise to exist without sponsorship and without interference." Id. at 397 U. S. 669. At some point, accommodation may devolve into "an unlawful chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 335
fostering of religion," Hobbie, supra, at 480 U. S. 145, but these are not such cases, in our view.
Under the Lemon analysis, it is a permissible legislative purpose to alleviate significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions. Appellees argue that there is no such purpose here, because § 702 provided adequate protection for religious employers prior to the 1972 amendment, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 336
when it exempted only the religious activities of such employers from the statutory ban on religious discrimination. We may assume for the sake of argument that the pre-1972 exemption was adequate in the sense that the Free Exercise Clause required no more. Nonetheless, it is a significant burden on a religious organization to require it, on pain of substantial liability, to predict which of its activities a secular court will consider religious. The line is hardly a bright one, and an organization might understandably be concerned that a judge would not understand its religious tenets and sense of mission. [Footnote 14] Fear of potential liability might affect the way an organization carried out what it understood to be its religious mission.
The second requirement under Lemon is that the law in question have "a principal or primary effect . . . that neither advances nor inhibits religion." 403 U.S. at 403 U. S. 612. Undoubtedly, religious organizations are better able now to advance their purposes than they were prior to the 1972 amendment to § 702. But religious groups have been better able to advance their purposes on account of many laws that have passed constitutional muster: for example, the property tax exemption at issue in Walz v. Tax Comm'n, supra, or the loans of schoolbooks to schoolchildren, including parochial school students, upheld in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 337
U.S. 236 (1968). A law is not unconstitutional simply because it allows churches to advance religion, which is their very purpose. For a law to have forbidden "effects" under Lemon, it must be fair to say that the government itself has advanced religion through its own activities and influence. As the Court observed in Walz,
Dedicatory Prayer for the Gymnasium, quoted, 594 F.Supp. at 800-801, n. 15. These cases therefore do not implicate the apparent concerns of the District Court. Moreover, we find no persuasive evidence in the record before us that the Church's ability to propagate its religious doctrine through the Gymnasium is any greater now than it was prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In such circumstances, we do not see how any advancement of religion achieved by the Gymnasium can be fairly attributed to the Government, as opposed to the Church. [Footnote 15] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 338
Appellees argue that § 702 offends equal protection principles by giving less protection to the employees of religious employers than to the employees of secular employers. [Footnote 16] Appellees rely on Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228, 456 U. S. 246 chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 339
(1982), for the proposition that a law drawing distinctions on religious grounds must be strictly scrutinized. But Larson indicates that laws discriminating among religions are subject to strict scrutiny, ibid., and that laws "affording a uniform benefit to all religions" should be analyzed under Lemon, 456 U. S. at 456 U. S. 252. In cases such as these, where a statute is neutral on its face and motivated by a permissible purpose of limiting governmental interference with the exercise of religion, we see no justification for applying strict scrutiny to a statute that passes the Lemon test. The proper inquiry is whether Congress has chosen a rational classification to further a legitimate end. We have already indicated that Congress acted with a legitimate purpose in expanding the § 702 exemption to cover all activities of religious employers. Supra at 483 U. S. 336. To dispose of appellees' equal protection argument, it suffices to hold -- as we now do -- that, as applied to the nonprofit activities of religious employers, §702 is rationally related to the legitimate purpose of alleviating significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions.
It cannot be seriously contended that § 702 impermissibly entangles church and state; the statute effectuates a more complete separation of the two and avoids the kind of intrusive inquiry into religious belief that the District Court engaged in in this case. The statute easily passes muster under the third part of the Lemon test. [Footnote 17] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 340
These cases present a confrontation between the rights of religious organizations and those of individuals. Any exemption from Title VII's proscription on religious discrimination necessarily has the effect of burdening the religious liberty of prospective and current employees. An exemption says that a person may be put to the choice of either conforming to certain religious tenets or losing a job opportunity, a promotion, or, as in these cases, employment itself. [Footnote 2/1] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 341
The potential for coercion created by such a provision is in serious tension with our commitment to individual freedom of conscience in matters of religious belief. [Footnote 2/2]
Laycock, Towards a General Theory of the Religion Clauses: The chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 342
Case of Church Labor Relations and the Right to Church Autonomy, 81 Colum.L.Rev. 1373, 1389 (1981). See also Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U. S. 696 (1976) (church has interest in effecting binding resolution of internal governance disputes); Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U. S. 94 (1952) (state statute purporting to transfer administrative control from one church authority to another violates Free Exercise Clause). For many individuals, 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. [Footnote 2/3] Determining that certain activities are in furtherance of an organization's religious mission, and that only those committed to that mission should conduct them, is thus a means by which a religious community defines itself. Solicitude for a church's ability to do so reflects the idea that furtherance of the autonomy of religious organizations often furthers individual religious freedom as well.
The authority to engage in this process of self-definition inevitably involves what we normally regard as infringement on free exercise rights, since a religious organization is able to condition employment in certain activities on subscription to particular religious tenets. We are willing to countenance the imposition of such a condition because we deem it vital that, if certain activities constitute part of a religious community's practice, then a religious organization should be able to chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 343
What makes the application of a religious-secular distinction difficult is that the character of an activity is not self-evident. As a result, determining whether an activity is religious or secular requires a searching case-by-case analysis. This results in considerable ongoing government entanglement in religious affairs. See id. at 403 U. S. 613. Furthermore, this prospect of government intrusion raises concern that a religious organization may be chilled in its free exercise activity. While a church may regard the conduct of certain functions as integral to its mission, a court may disagree. A religious organization therefore would have an incentive to characterize as religious only those activities about which there likely would be no dispute, even if it genuinely believed that religious commitment was important in performing other tasks as well. As a result, the community's process chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 344
The risk of chilling religious organizations is most likely to arise with respect to nonprofit activities. The fact that an operation is not organized as a profit-making commercial enterprise makes colorable a claim that it is not purely secular in orientation. In contrast to a for-profit corporation, a nonprofit organization must utilize its earnings to finance the continued provision of the goods or services it furnishes, and may not distribute any surplus to the owners. See generally Hansmann, The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise, 89 Yale L.J. 835 (1980). This makes plausible a church's contention that an entity is not operated simply in order to generate revenues for the church, but that the activities themselves are infused with a religious purpose. Furthermore, unlike for-profit corporations, nonprofits historically have been organized specifically to provide certain community services, not simply to engage in commerce. Churches often regard the provision of such services as a means of fulfilling religious duty and of providing an example of the way of life a church seeks to foster. [Footnote 2/4] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 345
Sensitivity to individual religious freedom dictates that religious discrimination be permitted only with respect to employment in religious activities. Concern for the autonomy of religious organizations demands that we avoid the entanglement and the chill on religious expression that a case-by-case determination would produce. We cannot escape the fact that these aims are in tension. Because of the nature of nonprofit activities, I believe that a categorical exemption for chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 346
Page 483 U. S. 347
By definition, such legislation has a religious purpose and effect in promoting the free exercise of religion. On the other hand, judicial deference to all legislation that purports to facilitate the free exercise of religion would completely vitiate the Establishment Clause. Any statute pertaining to religion can be viewed as an 'accommodation' of free exercise rights."
In my view, the opinion for the Court leans toward the second of the two unacceptable options described above. While acknowledging that "[u]ndoubtedly, religious organizations are better able now to advance their purposes than they were prior to the 1972 amendment to § 702," the Court seems to suggest that the "effects" prong of the Lemon test is not at all implicated as long as the government action can be characterized as "allowing" religious organizations to advance religion, in contrast to government action directly advancing religion. Ante at 483 U. S. 337. This distinction seems to me to obscure far more than to enlighten. Almost any government benefit to religion could be recharacterized as simply "allowing" a religion to better advance itself, unless perhaps it involved actual proselytization by government agents. In nearly every case of a government benefit to religion, the religious mission would not be advanced if the religion did not take advantage of the benefit; even a direct financial subsidy to a religious organization would not advance religion if, for some reason, the organization failed to make any use of the funds. It is for this same reason that there is little significance to the Court's observation that it was the Church, rather than the Government, that penalized Mayson's refusal to adhere to Church doctrine. Ante at 483 U. S. 337, n. 15. The Church had the power to put Mayson to a choice of qualifying for a temple recommend or losing his job because the Government had lifted from religious organizations the general regulatory burden imposed by § 702. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 348
Ante at 483 U. S. 344 (opinion concurring in judgment). These cases involve a Government decision to lift from a non-profit chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 483 U. S. 349
activity of a religious organization the burden of demonstrating that the particular nonprofit activity is religious as well as the burden of refraining from discriminating on the basis of religion. Because there is a probability that a nonprofit activity of a religious organization will itself be involved in the organization's religious mission, in my view, the objective observer should perceive the Government action as an accommodation of the exercise of religion, rather than as a Government endorsement of religion.