Posted on 07/03/2022 6:08:11 PM PDT by marshmallow
In Butler v. St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Academy, (ED NY, June 27, 2022), a New York federal district court dismissed a sexual orientation discrimination lawsuit brought by Cody Butler, a teacher of English Language Arts and Social Studies who was fired from his Catholic school teaching position shortly after he was hired. After his first teacher orientation session, Butler e-mailed the principal saying that the orientation made him uncomfortable because he is homosexual and plans in the future to marry his boyfriend. Within days, Butler was given a letter of termination. The court dismissed the suit on both ministerial exception and church autonomy grounds. As to the ministerial exception, the court said in part:
[E]xtensive evidence leaves no doubt that Butler’s job did, and would have continued to, include important ministerial duties....
Butler argued that the school's claim he was fired because his intended same-sex marriage which violated church doctrine was a pretext for firing him because of his sexual orientation. The court said in part:
[T]he only way for the jury to find pretext would be to question the Church’s explanation of religious doctrine, or to question how much that particular religious doctrine really mattered to the Church. To do so, however, would violate the church-autonomy principle....
(Excerpt) Read more at religionclause.blogspot.com ...
That headline can be interpreted in various ways.
The instated part is that the teacher applied for and accepted a job with the school thinking that he would be able heroically to force the church to keep him in violation of doctrine. Turned out badly
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