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No
22 December 2004A little-noticed case with big implications: "Finding Title VII's exemption for religious institutions 'is not limited to facilities where prayer takes place,'" writes The Legal Intelligencer, "a magistrate judge has dismissed a suit against a Jewish community center brought by an evangelical Christian who claims she was fired because she attended a 'Jews for Jesus' concert." Christianity Today's Ted Olsen says this is "good news" for evangelicals, who can use this precedent to fight for "faith-based" hiring (and firing) in publicly-funded religious organizations -- i.e., the Salvation Army can fire gay employees and still get government cheese. Or an evangelical soup kitchen with federal funding can refuse to hire a Unitarian. Or a Muslim homeless shelter financed with gov't cash can stick to a no-Christians staff. How far does it go? Nobody knows. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacob P. Hart ruled that any organization having religion among its primary purposes may be exempt from equal opportunity employment rules under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In the case at hand, that category included an "essentially secular" Jewish community center, in which Hart found a "pervasive Jewish orientation." Two interesting problems arise from that conclusion. The first is that of the old debate between Jewishness and Judaism. For instance, I used to work for an explicitly secular Jewish organization. Would it have been entitled to hire only Jews? How about hiring only secular Jews? There's a pretty slippery slope here, and at the bottom lies a white power church in Idaho seeking federal funds for its own "faith-based" initiative. The other problem is that of this ruling's vague definition of organization. How about the bank recently described in the New York Times Magazine's cover story on Christian workplaces? Would they be entitled to hire and fire on religious grounds? Bottom line: This isn't "good news," as Christianity Today hopes, nor is it really bad news: It's a story waiting to be more fully reported.
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