I find this case and those like it troubling. Fisher a twenty year employee at the Catholic “Gates of Heaven” cemetery was fired by the Church. She filed an age discrimination claim. The Church claimed, as an employee of the cemetery, she was a Minister of the Church. Are we to believe that the Catholic Church has female ministers? When it wants to fire them, that is apparently what they are.
The Court of Appeals holds that because of the First Amendment Establishment Clause that the Church is immune. This leads me to wonder just what laws, if any, protect an ordinary worker for a religious organization.
The Court goes to absurd lengths to what seems to me to argue that the Catholic Church is a real religion and that running a cemetery is part of that religion. After all the Gates of Heaven is where dead people enter heaven, but those who are living enter a legal abyss.
The Court points out that allowing the suit would impermissibly intrude on the internal affairs of the Church. So what. Of all organizations a church should be run in a Godly manner, be able to establish that, and should be proud to publicly prove that.