{"id":1190,"date":"2012-01-19T09:50:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T14:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1190"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","slug":"hosanna-tabor-and-the-courts-retaliation-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/01\/19\/hosanna-tabor-and-the-courts-retaliation-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Hosanna-Tabor and the Court\u2019s Retaliation Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne King<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week the Supreme Court decided\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC<\/em><\/a>, recognizing a ministerial exception to the Americans with Disabilities Act\u2019s anti-retaliation provision under the First Amendment. The Court also held that the ministerial exception applied to Cheryl Perich, a teacher at a church-based school who threatened to bring an ADA claim.<\/p>\n

The ADA and other workers\u2019 rights statutes prohibit employer retaliation against an employee for protected activity, such as filing a discrimination claim. Normally, a retaliation case involves a pretext analysis, because the employer rarely admits that retaliation was the reason for an adverse employment action. Instead, an employer might cite performance, or perhaps insubordination, and the employee has to show that protected activity was the actual motivator.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor\u00a0<\/em>is very different, because the church acknowledged terminating Perich because of what would normally count as protected activity. As Justice Alito\u2019s concurrence summed it up, \u201cHosanna-Tabor discharged [Perich] because she threatened to file suit against the Church in a civil court. This threat contravened the Lutheran doctrine that disputes among Christians should be resolved internally without resort to the civil court system and all the legal wrangling it entails. In Hosanna-Tabor\u2019s view, [Perich\u2019s] disregard for this doctrine compromised her religious function, disqualifying her from serving effectively as a voice for the church\u2019s faith.\u201d That is, the church acknowledged conduct amounting to retaliation, but the church\u2019s right to make that decision implicates the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the Court famously sided with employers in several recent high-profile opinions (Wal-Mart v. Dukes<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tires<\/em>), its latest retaliation decisions have actually been relatively good for employees (Crawford v. Nashville<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Kasten v. St. Gobain<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Thompson v. North American Stainless<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Hosanna-Tabor<\/em>\u00a0departs from that trend, but comparing the 9-0 decision to last term\u2019s 8-0\u00a0Thompson<\/em>suggests some continuity in the Court\u2019s approach to retaliation. In both cases, broadly speaking, the Court addressed the problem of who is protected under an employment discrimination law\u2019s anti-retaliation provision, and declined to articulate a specific rule defining who is protected.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Thompson<\/em>, after a female employee filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, her employer fired her fianc\u00e9, who worked at the same plant. The Court held that the fianc\u00e9 was protected by the anti-retaliation claim,\u00a0 but the Justices \u201cdecline[d] to identify a fixed class of relationships for which third-party reprisals are unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, in\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor<\/em>\u00a0the Court did not provide a rule stating when the ministerial exception applied.\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor<\/em>\u00a0offered a bit more guidance than Thompson, citing factors which carry weight in applying the exception, such as holding oneself out as a minister, or performing religious functions.\u00a0 But both\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Thompson<\/em>, for the most part, leave to the lower courts the task of identifying and shaping the factors determining who is protected under anti-retaliation provisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne King Last week the Supreme Court decided\u00a0Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC, recognizing a ministerial exception to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-jc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}