A Missouri woman who was found to be in a same-sex relationship has been rebuffed by a federal court in her lawsuit against a Catholic diocese over termination of her employment.
The Jackson County Circuit Court ruled Tuesday that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has a First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion, which allows it to make employment decisions without court interference.
The lawsuit was filed by Colleen Simon, who began working as director for social ministries for St. Francis Xavier Parish in July 2013. The priest ended Simon’s employment in May 2014 after an article appeared in the Kansas City Star that described her as married to another woman.
The diocese said her same-sex union “contradicts church laws, discipline, and teaching and the diocesan Policy on Ethics and Integrity in Ministry.”
The court said that “at the very heart of these … allegations is the diocese’s determination of plaintiff’s fitness to be its representative.”
It said “such allegations take on the hue of theological propriety, and as outsider, the court cannot but see through a glass darkly the inherent truth and falsity.”
“Lest we dash our foot against the obdurate edifice of reversible error in stumbling to address what are here essentially religious questions, this court shall instead rely on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to deprive it of subject-matter jurisdiction.”
Two other claims in the case, involving a state-mandated letter describing the woman’s work and the possibility of whether she was due overtime pay, remained unresolved.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the diocese, said the ruling means the church is allowed to employ people who subscribe to its teachings.
“A church isn’t obligated to employ those who act contrary to the church’s teachings. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this as recently as four years ago,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erik Stanley. “The district court was on very firm constitutional ground to reject this attempt to drag the government into a church’s theological decisions – the very line the First Amendment says the government cannot cross.”
ADF Legal Counsel Jeremiah Galus added, “If churches are forced to employ people who do not follow the religious teachings of those churches, the church will no longer be able to minister consistently or freely in accordance with its faith.”
The plaintiff claimed she was given assurances that although she was a lesbian in a same-sex “marriage,” “it would not impact her employment.”
Such assurances, she insisted, were fraudulent.
But the judge said: “For the court to inquire into the knowing falsity of the diocesan agents’, Frs. Vowells’ and Garcia’s, representations to plaintiff about her sexual orientation relative to her position in the diocese would impermissibly entangle the court in matters and decisions purely canonical, since the court must necessarily examine the religious views and practices of the diocese in an attempt to perceive the reasonableness of plaintiff’s reliance on the diocese’s representations.”
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