In Ference v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, (WD PA, Sept. 30, 2026), a Pennsylvania federal district court refused to dismiss a Title VII suit brought by a secular teacher at a Catholic school who was fired from his position because he was in a same-sex marriage. The school claimed that the exception in Title VII for religion-based hiring by religious institutions protected it from Title VII liability. The court said in part:
Was Mr. Ference’s firing permissible religious discrimination, or prohibited sex discrimination?...
The central question is how expansive Congress intended the religious exemptions to be....
... [T]he Court now turns to whether application of Title VII in this case raises serious constitutional questions. The Court concludes that it does. More precisely, it raises a single serious question: whether religious employers are subject to employment discrimination laws that “directly conflict” with their religious doctrine.... Mr. Ference’s claim implies that Title VII prohibits Aquinas Academy’s “right to implement Catholic teachings on marriage.”...
... [T]he Court finds that Congress clearly intended for Title VII’s religious exemptions not to apply to religiously motivated sex discrimination. The Court therefore concludes that the exemptions don’t apply to Mr. Ference’s firing. But that doesn’t mean religious employers will always face liability in such cases; the First Amendment provides them with its own robust protections....
... [T]he church autonomy doctrine does not protect employees who are not “ministerial” under the exception. An employee cannot be non-ministerial for purposes of the exception but still occupy a role “important” enough to trigger the church autonomy doctrine....
Outside the possible applicability of the ministerial exception, the only burden on Aquinas’s religious autonomy in this case stems from Title VII’s direct conflict with the school’s ability to implement Catholic views on marriage. And that burden is not heavy enough to trigger the church autonomy doctrine. Holding otherwise would effectively give religious employers constitutional carte blanche to discriminate on any basis—not just sex—in the name of religious autonomy, so long as their beliefs require such discrimination. The Court declines to take such a radical step.
Furthermore, such an expansive interpretation of the church autonomy doctrine “would render the ministerial exception superfluous.”...
The expressive-association analysis in this case involves balancing the “burden imposed on the school’s associational expression” against the government’s compelling interest in combatting sex discrimination in the workplace.... But the Court concludes that applying Title VII in Mr. Ference’s case would not “significantly affect” Aquinas Academy’s ability to advocate its viewpoints.... For that reason, the burden on the school’s expressive freedom does not outweigh the compelling government interest in this case....
... [A]ll the burden on Aquinas Academy’s freedom of expressive association flows from Mr. Ference’s marriage status alone.... Until the incidental disclosure on the waiver form, his marriage status was apparently a complete secret at Aquinas; and nothing about the circumstances of that disclosure imply that Mr. Ference would not, or could not, remain discreet about his marriage at work. The Court therefore concludes that applying Title VII to this case would not significantly affect Aquinas Academy’s expressive interest....
