Parents, Not Michigan, Should Decide Who Teaches at Catholic Schools

ADF’s Sixth Circuit appeal challenges a ruling that lets Michigan’s civil-rights law reach a Catholic school’s hiring—and tests whether parents’ choice of faith-based education still counts.

Parents, not Michigan, should decide who teaches Catholic children, and the Sixth Circuit should restore that choice. Alliance Defending Freedom announced Oct. 26 that it had filed opening briefs in Sixth Circuit appeals for a Grand Rapids Catholic school and a Christian healthcare ministry². ADF says Michigan's civil rights law "threatens to force a Christian healthcare ministry and a Catholic school to hire people who reject their faith¹."

A parent who enrolls a child in a Catholic school is choosing the adults who will shape that child every day. Who gave the state a vote on who those adults are?

“threatens to force a Christian healthcare ministry and a Catholic school to hire people who reject their faith”

Alliance Defending Freedom

Families choose Catholic formation

The case begins with Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Grand Rapids, which challenged Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act over its Catholic school's employment decisions². A Catholic school exists to pass on a faith, and it cannot pass on what its own staff reject. A family that picks that school over a public one is trusting that the adults in the building live what the child is taught. Once the school must hire under the state's rule, that trust is the first thing to go, and the family cannot take it back.

Court ruling leaves hiring unresolved

A Michigan federal district court denied Sacred Heart summary judgment on its constitutional claims and granted summary judgment to the state defendants. The court held that the act "adequately protects the Catholic school's religious rights through existing exemptions²." Adequately protects it from what?

The court then turned aside the school's larger claim, holding that its arguments for broader religious autonomy and expressive association protections in employment decisions were not supported by current Supreme Court precedent².

Parents chose a school shaped by faith

Parents choose a faith school because they want the faith to run through every class, every hallway and every adult their child meets. A child learns a faith from the people who live it in front of him, and a handbook on the wall does not do that work.

Parents answer for what their children believe, and no statute should hand that answer to the state.

The ruling leaves faith-based hiring exposed

An exemption written in general terms does not reach the hire, and the hire is where a school's faith is either lived or abandoned. A school can keep its written policies and still lose the decision that makes those policies real. If a Catholic school cannot require its teachers to share its faith, what is left of the choice parents made when they enrolled their children?

The Sixth Circuit should restore parents’ choice

The Sixth Circuit should reverse the ruling and hold that a Catholic school may hire the people who will teach its faith. Parents at Sacred Heart and families across Michigan who choose faith-based schools should follow this appeal, because it decides whether their choice still counts.