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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowDays after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found the ministerial exception protects a Chicago Catholic Church from a lawsuit brought by a fired employee, the Indianapolis Archdiocese is citing the decision to bolster its argument that the employment lawsuit filed by former Roncalli High School counselor Lynn Starkey should be dismissed.
The Archdiocese, represented by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, filed the notice of supplemental authority Wednesday in the Southern Indiana District Court. Pointing to the 7th Circuit’s July 9 en banc ruling in Demkovich v. St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 19-2142, the Catholic Church asserts the recent decision is “directly relevant” to the Starkey case and requires the district court to order a dismissal.
“The en banc ruling in Demkovich confirms that hostile work environment claims like Starkey’s are barred by the ministerial exception,” the Indianapolis Archdiocese argues in its notice to the district court. “And it confirms that Starkey’s suit is independently barred by the First Amendment doctrines protecting church autonomy and prohibiting entanglement in religious questions.”
So far, Starkey has not filed a response with the court. But her attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, managing partner DeLaney & DeLaney LLC in Indianapolis, told The Indiana Lawyer that Demkovich does not apply.
“In the Starkey case, we believe that the Court will find that Starkey was not a ‘minister,’ but that issue has not been decided yet,” DeLaney said in a statement. “By contrast, Demkovich involved minister-on-minister hostile work environment harassment. Demkovich says nothing about whether the ministerial exception should be applied to a high school guidance counselor.”
Starkey sued the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, claiming she was fired after 39 years because she is a lesbian and in a same-sex marriage. In an opposition motion to the church’s motion for summary judgment, she argued the ministerial exception does not cover her because the duties she performed as a high school counselor at Roncalli were “almost exclusively secular.”
In its supplemental authority, the Archdiocese maintains Demkovich makes clear that Starkey’s hostile work environment claim is subject to the ministerial exception. Moreover, the 7th Circuit ruling protects the church’s right to select non-ministers based on religious doctrine, it argues.
“Starkey tries to conflate the church autonomy doctrine with the ministerial exception, and argues that church autonomy doesn’t apply if claims can be resolved using ‘neutral principles of law,’” the Archdiocese argues. “But Demkovich rejects both points. The Court explained that while ‘[t]he ministerial exception follows naturally from the church autonomy doctrine,’ it is just one part of the Supreme Court’s broader ‘church autonomy jurisprudence,’ which guarantees churches ‘independence in matters of faith and doctrine and in closely linked matters of internal government.’”
The case is Lynn Starkey v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Inc. and Roncalli High School, Inc., 1:19-cv-3153.
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