Cornell Law Review

Article

Disentangling Religion and Public Reason: An Alternative to the Ministerial Exception

Sabine Tsuruda, Assistant Professor, Queen’s University Faculty of Law.

This Article develops a theory of meaningful work to support an alternative to the ministerial exception that would permit religious organizations to hire like-minded employees, but only when doing so would not subvert the purposes of employment discrimination law. Such an “authenticity exception” can be implemented without state entanglement in religion by distinguishing the inherently religious issue of what makes work religious from the public issue of whether a limitation on someone’s rights is supported by public reasons—reasons that we could all accept as free and equal members of society. It then illustrates the authenticity exception through a similar exception in Canadian law and revisits ministerial exception cases to show how the authenticity exception better closes the gap between religious liberty and exempted discrimination.

Sep 2021