The Most Important Religious Freedom Case in Two Decades

From Rick Garnett , a law professor at the University of Notre Dame:

Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear (what I think is) the most important religious-freedom case in 20 years.  The Supreme Court this morning granted cert in Hosanna Tabor Church v. EEOC. ( More here , at the Religion Clause blog.)

The case does not involve what’s become the usual stuff of the Court’s church-state caselaw:  prayer at football games, war-memorial crosses in the desert, manger scenes and Ten Commandments monuments in public parks.  Nevertheless, again, this case is huge, and it is about, at its heart, what really matters.

The question in the case is whether antidiscrimination laws – like, for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act – allow courts to review hiring-and-firing decisions involving “ministerial employees.”  In this particular case, a lower federal court had ruled that parochial-school teachers who teach primarily secular subjects are not “ministerial employees”, and therefore are covered by the Act.