In Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung, (CJ EU, March 17, 2026), in a referral from the Federal Labor Court (Germany), the Court of Justice of the European Union, interpreted Council Directive 2000/78 that, among other things, bans employment discrimination on the basis of religion or belief. The Court said in part:
2. The request [for a Preliminary Ruling] has been made in proceedings between the Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung (a Catholic association counselling on pregnancy, Germany) ... and JB concerning the legality of the dismissal of the latter on the grounds of an alleged infringement of the duty to act in good faith and with loyalty to the Association’s ethos....
24. JB, who is the mother of five children, entered the service of the Association in 2006. Until her parental leave, which began on 11 June 2013 and which ended on 31 May 2019, she was entrusted with pregnancy counselling. In October 2013, JB, under the procedure provided for by the national provisions, declared before the competent local authority that she was leaving the Catholic Church. The grounds she stated for leaving the Catholic Church were that the Diocese of Limburg levied, in addition to the State church tax, an additional church levy on Catholic persons who, like JB, are in an interfaith marriage with a high-earning spouse.
25 After unsuccessfully attempting to persuade JB to rejoin the Catholic Church, the Association, on 1 June 2019, dismissed JB on the grounds that she had left that church.... [I]n the pregnancy counselling service in which JB was working the Association employed four employees who were members of the Catholic Church and two employees who were not members of that church....
... [T]he Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules: Article 4(1) and (2) of Directive 2000/78 ... must be interpreted as precluding national legislation under which a private organisation the ethos of which is based on a religion may require of an employee who is a member of a certain church practising that religion not to leave that church during the employment relationship, on pain of dismissal or, in order to continue the employment relationship, to rejoin that church after leaving it, even though-- that organisation employs other persons to carry out the same duties as those of the employee in question, without requiring that those persons be members of that church, and – that employee does not openly act in a manner that is antagonistic to the church concerned, where ... those occupational requirements are not genuine, legitimate and justified having regard to that organisation’s ethos.
The July 2025 Opinion of the Advocate General, the Court's Press Release on the case, and the Court's explanatory video on the case are available from the Court's website.
Courthouse News Service reports on the decision.
