Brown leather Bible cover with embossed cross.
PITTSBURGH – A Lutheran ex-middle school teacher at a Pennsylvania Catholic school will be able to tell jurors he was unfairly fired because he is gay, in a case questioning how religious organizations can use protections they received in civil rights laws.
Pittsburgh federal judge J. Nicholas Ranjan on Sept. 30 denied the motion for summary judgment of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg and Aquinas Academy, where Kenneth Ference was hired despite not being a member of the Catholic church.
He simply did not teach religion class, and Aquinas and Ference were fine with that arrangement. But when he listed his spouse as a man on his insurance information, Aquinas let him go.
The school has argued his employment agreement and other hiring documents say teachers could be fired for rejection of church doctrine or laws, including those related to abortion and homosexuality. He says his civil rights were violated under federal and state laws.
“Everybody agrees, one way or another, that Mr. Ference’s same-sex marriage was the reason he was fired,” Ranjan wrote.
Whether Aquinas and the church will be held liable should be left to a jury, Ranjan added in adopting the overall conclusion of a magistrate judge’s recommendations, issued last year. He says Ference’s case raises “serious constitutional questions.”
“More precisely, it raises a single serious question: whether religious employers are subject to employment discrimination laws that ‘directly conflict’ with their religious doctrine,” Ranjan wrote.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act allows religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion. However, the Third Circuit has not believed that exemption should be used to give those organizations a defense against any form of discrimination.
Congress clearly intended for the exemption not to apply to religiously motivated sex discrimination, Ranjan wrote.
“But that doesn’t mean religious employers will always face liability in such cases: the First Amendment provides them with its own robust protections,” he added.
As Aquinas faced starting the 2021-22 school year with an empty teacher position, Ference applied to teach sixth grade. It took the school less than 30 minutes to respond and eventually hired him as a secular teacher.
Only a few weeks later, Aquinas found out Ference was married to a man. It defends its decision as exercising its freedom of expressive association. Ranjan and magistrate judge Maureen Kelly were tasked with deciding if Ference’s termination was rooted in Aquinas’ religious beliefs.
Aquinas said Ference attended church services with students, though he said he was only there to chaperone. Testimony showed he never prayed with students or took communion.
The defendants said he did participate in morning and afternoon prayers over the school intercom, though he disputed that. Kelly ultimately wrote that granting the defendants summary judgment would be a "significant expansion of immunity for religious institutions."
