The Seventh-day Adventist Church has sued for the right to fire gay employees, arguing they have a First Amendment right to employ only members of the church in regular standing, and to fire those who don’t follow church doctrine.
The Silver Spring-based organization’s complaint, filed Oct. 2 against the Maryland Civil Rights Commission and Attorney General Anthony Brown in U.S. District Court, argues the Maryland Supreme Court improperly narrowed the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act in a decision last year.
“Plaintiffs believe that all their employees are representatives of the Church and are responsible for sharing the Church’s faith with the world,” wrote lawyers for the church and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
“It is therefore a critical component of Plaintiffs’ religious exercise that all their employees embrace the Church’s faith, support its religious mission, and share the faith with others.”
The church requires employees to be “baptized, tithe-paying member[s] in regular standing of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.” It prohibits alcohol, tobacco, profanity, “remarriage without Biblical grounds,” and “immoral conduct including but not limited to engaging in pornographic activities, child sexual abuse, incest, fornication, adultery and homosexual practices.”
Last year, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of Catholic Relief Services, which argued it had the right to deny health coverage to a gay employee’s husband. The court ruled the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act didn’t prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The court also narrowed the types of jobs for which a religious requirement could be imposed under the Fair Employment Practices Act, allowing employers to enforce religious rules only against “employees who perform duties that directly further the core mission(s) of the religious entity.”
In its suit Wednesday, the church argued courts shouldn’t decide which activities “directly further” their “core mission.”
“Applying this amorphous standard would require courts to delve into entangling questions of religious doctrine,” they wrote.
“Under any reading of Catholic Relief Services, roles like those of a building services technician or a janitorial manager would now fall outside of (the law’s) redefined religious exemption,” the complaint states. “This means that, for some sub-set of jobs, Plaintiffs’ current hiring practices already are in violation of Maryland law.”
The general counsel for the Civil Rights Commission and a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The Becket Fund has litigated some of the country’s most prominent freedom-of-religion cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. Among those was the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed some organizations to refuse to cover their employees’ birth control costs.
The organization also won a case brought by an incarcerated Muslim man who wanted to grow a beard, and another in which a Jewish synagogue fought New York City’s coronavirus restrictions. Most recently, in 2021, it won a case for a religious foster care agency that refused to provide services to same-sex couples.
