Bob makes very good points but I'm not persuaded. Religious employers can be required to report child abuse by their employees, so why can't they be required to provide legal boilerplate to incoming employees?
If Bob is right, we have serious problems in my view. The public policy problem is that no religious organization is going to make such a warning without being prodded by the law (or insurance cos., but they do not prod without legal --aka financial -- consequences). So we are stuck with obvious harm to employees of religious organizations but no solution. I am a firm believer that the Constitution was not intended and should not make it impossible for government to prevent or remedy substantial harm. So that leaves the government -- charged with protecting citizens from harm -- on Bob's theory hamstrung from requiring religious employers to issue a warning regarding the state of the law. So how does the government protect its citizens? I guess there are several public education options: (1) public service announcement: if you are considering or are working for a religious institution in a religious capacity, you need to understand that it is immune under judicial doctrine from anti-discrimination laws, including sexual harassment and gender discrimination (2) on every W-2, which the religious employer must provide to every full-time employee, right?, there is boilerplate saying the same as above. Here is another option-- how about no religious organization can be eligible for faith-based funding unless it provides to its employees a statement that it is immune from the anti-discrimination laws? Marci In a message dated 7/16/2010 3:13:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, rtut...@law.gwu.edu writes: Marci's idea of a warning for ministerial employees would certainly be a prudent step for religious employers to take on their own initiative, but I don't think the state could impose such a requirement as a condition of the religious employer invoking the exception in litigation -- the exception seems to me jurisdictional, not something derived from a religious organization's claim of autonomy (about which there is good reason to be dubious) but rather from courts' constitutional inability to determine what is adequate qualification for or performance of the ministerial role. Bob Tuttle
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