CIVIL RIGHTS
DOJ Sides Against Axed Gay Catholic Schoolteacher
Trump administration tells religious institutions to fi re away in the name of God
BY MATT TRACY
Citing First Amendment
rights, the US Department
of Justice (DOJ)
has taken the extraordinary
step of diving into a state
court contract law dispute in opposition
to a Catholic schoolteacher
who is suing the Archdiocese of
Indianapolis after being fi red for
getting married to another man.
Joshua Payne-Elliott, in a case
brought in Marion County Superior
Court in Indianapolis, is arguing
that the archdiocese unlawfully
meddled in his contract with
Cathedral High School when it issued
an ultimatum to the school
to either fi re him or lose its offi cial
status as a Catholic school. Payne-
Elliott has come to a settlement
with the school itself, according
to the Indianapolis Star , but his
lawsuit against the archdiocese
continues. And, now, the DOJ is
taking interest in a case that coincidentally
or not, is being litigated
in homophobic Vice President Mike
Joshua Payne-Elliott (right), with his husband Layton.
Pence’s home state.
Cathedral High School apparently
feared the same fate as another
Catholic institution, Brebeuf
Jesuit Preparatory School, which
lost its own offi cial status as a
Catholic school when it did not fi re
Payne-Elliott’s husband, Layton
Payne-Elliott, at the time the couple
FACEBOOK/ JOSHUA PAYNE-ELLIOTT
married.
The religious right has often
employed First Amendment arguments
to challenge nondiscrimination
statutes and policies, but
here the DOJ is bringing a constitutional
argument based on the
First Amendment into a contract
dispute.
In a Statement of Interest fi led on
September 27, the DOJ asserted,
“The First Amendment protects the
right of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
of Indianapolis to interpret
and apply Catholic doctrine.”
In a written statement offered by
the DOJ, US Attorney Josh Minkler
said, “If the First Amendment’s Religion
Clauses stand for anything,
it is that secular courts cannot entangle
themselves in questions of
religious law.”
The Statement of Interest also
states, “Supreme Court precedent
clearly holds that the First Amendment
protects the Archdiocese’s
right to this form of expressive association,
and courts cannot interfere
with that right.”
First Amendment claims based
on “expressive association” proved
successful when the Boy Scouts of
America in 2000 were able to overturn
a New Jersey Supreme Court
case that found the group had discriminated
in dismissing James
➤ CATHEDRAL HIGH SCHOOL, continued on p.13
Judge Rules for Agency Refusing Gay Parents
US district court fi nds Michigan adoption nondiscrimination policy hostile to religion
BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD
A federal judge has issued
a preliminary injunction
barring the
State of Michigan from
declining to renew the license of a
Catholic adoption agency that refuses
to certify same-sex couples
or single people as adoptive or foster
parents but instead refers them
to other agencies.
The September 26 order by US
District Judge Robert J. Jonker allows
St. Vincent Catholic Charities
to renew its adoption services contract
with the state, due to expire
on September 30, while the agency’s
challenge to the state’s application
of its non-discrimination
laws proceeds.
The injunction is the latest in
a complicated sequence of events
surrounding the role of faith-based
institutions in adoption and foster
care services in Michigan.
According to Jonker’s opinion,
both Michigan regulation and the
federal law under which fi nancial
assistance is channeled to the
state to support its adoption and
foster care system require that
people seeking to be certifi ed as
adoptive or foster parents not be
subjected to discrimination based
on sexual orientation or gender
identity, among numerous prohibited
grounds. But because some
private adoption and foster care
organizations under contract with
the state are “faith-based” agencies
whose religious views prevent
them from certifying single people
or same-sex couples and the Legislature
did not want to lose their
services, the state enacted a law
allowing those agencies to refer
LGBTQ applicants to other agencies
to carry out the evaluation
and issue certifi cation.
Same-sex couples challenged
this “religious freedom” statute as
violating their constitutional rights,
with some of them approaching St.
Vincent Catholic Charities and being
referred elsewhere. The state
originally defended the statute but
when out lesbian Dana Nessel, a
Democrat, was elected attorney
general last year, after a campaign
in which she criticized that law for
authorizing anti-LGBTQ discrimination,
she changed the state’s
position. Her offi ce negotiated a
settlement with the plaintiff couples
under which the state pledged
to enforce its anti-discrimination
rules without any exception for
faith-based agencies.
St. Vincent was warned that
unless it dropped its policy of referring
same-sex couples to other
agencies, its contract might not
be renewed and its license to operate
as an adoption services provider
would be revoked. Faced with
its imminent cut-off, St. Vincent
joined by some foster and adoptive
parents who have worked with it in
the past, brought suit challenging
the state’s action, citing the state
law authorizing referrals to other
➤ CATHOLIC CHARITIES, continued on p.13
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