CV NEWS FEED // Several organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs this month in support of a Catholic parish school’s lawsuit challenging a Michigan law that forces religious institutions to hire LGBTQ employees.
Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan, filed a lawsuit against the state in December 2022 after the legislature reinterpreted the Michigan Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity among legally protected civil rights. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer officially approved the reinterpretation in a March 2023 amendment.
The amendment does not include protection for the religious freedom rights of businesses and organizations that oppose LGBTQ ideology, meaning that Sacred Heart’s parish school is now unable to refuse employment to a LGBTQ-identifying individual.
“The missing protections mean that the change to the law requires Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish and its school, Sacred Heart Academy, to hire faculty and staff who lead lives in direct opposition to the Catholic faith, speak messages that violate Church doctrine, and decline to articulate Catholic beliefs in teaching students and when advertising the school to prospective students or job applicants,” ADF stated in a Nov. 22 press release.
Several parish families joined the lawsuit, and after a lower court dismissed the case, Sacred Heart Academy appealed to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court. Several organizations from other religious backgrounds, including the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the Religious Freedom Institute’s Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team also filed friend-of-the-court briefs, asking the court to protect the academy’s First Amendment right “to hire coreligionists [people of the same religion].”
“The coreligionist exemption allows religious organizations to determine that certain positions, including nonministerial ones, are so imbued with religious significance that those positions should be occupied only by employees who assent and adhere to certain religious tenets,” the amicus brief from the Jews and Muslims stated. “The coreligionist exemption is a critical precedent that allows religious groups to continue their existence and their purpose by guaranteeing their right to associate, through employment, with those who share the faith of the religious group and exemplify that faith by the way they live.”
ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch said that by forbidding Sacred Heart Academy to “discriminate against sex,” the state is discriminating against religion.
“As a federal court concluded in another case involving a Catholic social-service organization, this sort of illegitimate targeting creates a ‘strong inference’ that the state’s ‘real target is the religious beliefs’ of the Catholic Church ‘and not discriminatory conduct,’” Bursch said in a press release. “Here, Michigan is forcing Sacred Heart to make an unconstitutional and unconscionable choice between teaching and practicing the Catholic faith or closing their doors forever, while denying parents the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
