Court Rules NC Catholic School Had Right To Fire Gay Teacher Who Announced Marriage

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A Catholic school in North Carolina had the right to fire a gay teacher who announced his marriage on social media a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, reversing a judge’s earlier decision.

A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, reversed a 2021 ruling that Charlotte Catholic High School and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte had violated Lonnie Billard’s federal employment protections against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The school said Billard wasn’t invited back as a substitute teacher because of his “advocacy in favor of a position that is opposed to what the church teaches about marriage,” a court document said.

U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn determined Billard — a full-time teacher for a decade until 2012 — was a lay employee for the limited purpose of teaching secular classes. Cogburn said a trial would still have to be held to determine appropriate relief for him. A 2020 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court declared Title VII also protected workers who were fired for being gay or transgender.

But Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, writing Wednesday’s prevailing opinion, said that Billard fell under a “ministerial exception” to Title VII that courts have derived from the First Amendment that protects religious institutions in how they treat employees “who perform tasks so central to their religious missions — even if the tasks themselves do not advertise their religious nature.”

That included Billard — who primarily taught English as a substitute and who previously drama when working full-time — because Charlotte Catholic expected instructors to integrate faith throughout the curriculum, Harris wrote. And the