Court Opinion

ID: 9734324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:31:59.430784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:47.924393
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I believe that for many parents the decision to enroll their children in religiously affiliated private schools is a matter of conscience; a decision that sometimes exacts considerable personal sacrifice. Without doubt the State of Minnesota has an interest in the application of the principles articulated in the Minnesota Labor Relations Act and in the availability of the collective bargaining process. Certainly, the rights to engage in collective bargaining and to be represented by an exclusive representative are important to workers and are deserving of governmental protection and encouragement. If, however, that interest collides with the constitutional guarantee of rights of conscience, it seems to me that the interest in the collective bargaining process must yield.
Article I, section 16 of the Minnesota Constitution provides in part:
The right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience shall never be infringed; * * * nor shall any control of or interference with the rights of conscience be permitted * * * *
Despite this constitutional restriction on interference with the rights of conscience, the Bureau of Mediation Services exercised jurisdiction over Hill-Murray High School, a coeducational high school operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis, and mandated collective bargaining between Hill-Murray High School and Hill-Murray Federation of Teachers, which the Bureau designated as the exclusive representative of the teachers employed by the school. In so interjecting itself into the relationship between the school and its teachers, the Bureau has empowered the teachers, through their governmentally designated representative, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience by making the continued operation of the school prohibitively expensive.
Certainly, organized labor holds the power to force closure of the employer’s enterprise by enforcing contractual demands which an employer cannot meet. When the enterprise in question is a commercial enterprise, it is only fitting that the collective work force which produces the product or performs the service which the employer markets should have such power. When, however, the enterprise is oriented to religion, not commerce, the power to force closure is the power to control or interfere with constitutionally protected rights of conscience. Here, it is the state, through the intervention of the Bureau of Mediation Service which has empowered the teachers.
This is not to say that the state’s mandate to the school to enter into the collective bargaining process with the Federation has forced closure of the school or of any other religiously affiliated school. Neither is it to assert that closure is the inevitable result of the collective bargaining process. The teachers, through their exclusive representative, may elect never to exercise the power conferred upon them by the Bureau’s decision. It is simply to recognize that the state, which has interjected itself into the matter by asserting jurisdiction, has empowered the Federation to control or interfere with rights of conscience in violation of article I, section 16 of the Minnesota Constitution. Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals.