Fourth Circuit rules Charlotte Catholic can fire gay teacher
The courts must stay out of Charlotte Catholic High School’s decision to fire a beloved theater teacher for being gay and posting about his engagement on Facebook, according to a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Wednesday.
In the latest round of a high-stakes church and state legal fight, a panel of three judges reversed U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn’s 2021 decision that the school violated a federal ban on sex discrimination in the workplace when it fired Lonnie Billard.
Billard was a beloved CCHS theater and English teacher for 10 years before he retired in 2014. He’d won the 2011 Inspirational Educator Award from North Carolina State University and the 2012 Charlotte Catholic Teacher of the Year award. Even in retirement, he still made appearances as a substitute teacher.
On Oct. 25, 2014, two weeks after the federal courts struck down North Carolina’s ban on samesex marriage, he shared plans to marry his longtime partner:
“Yes, I’m finally going to make an honest (at least legal) man out of Rich (Donham),” he wrote on Facebook. “I thank all the courageous people who had more guts than I who refused to back down and accept anything but ‘equal.’”
Two months later, on Christmas Day, Billard learned he’d been fired.
“When Mr. Billard knowingly violated Church teaching, that put him in a position where he wasn’t effectively able to pass on the Catholic faith to the next generation,” said Luke Goodrich, a lawyer representing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, Mecklenburg Area Catholic Schools and CCHS for free through the
Becket Fund, a religious liberty law firm.
“The whole reason Catholic schools exist is not just to provide a great education in reading, writing and arithmetic, but also to pass on the Catholic faith.”
Billard disagreed. In 2017, he filed suit, and a team headed by an ACLU lawyer took the reins.
The case was heard in the Western District Court of North Carolina in 2021. Billard and his lawyers argued the diosese and CCHS violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
In district court, the school could have asserted “ministerial exception” to Title VII, but it didn’t.
Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Ministerial exception exempts religious organizations from antidiscrimination laws when employment decisions about their ministers are involved.
Judges in the appeals court Wednesday said they had to consider the exception, even if the school didn’t assert it. The exception, the appeals court decided, immunizes CCHS’S decision to fire Billard.
“The outcome of this was foreordained by the Constitution and binding precedent before it was
ever filed,” Goodrich said during a phone call with The Charlotte Observer. “The Supreme Court has made crystal clear that the government can’t force religious schools to hire teachers who reject core (Catholic) teachings.”
The exception also kicks the case back down to district court, where a judge must re-enter a judgment in favor of the school.
Billard has 14 days to ask the Fourth Circuit to again hear his case or 90 days to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
RESPONSE TO DECISION
Luke Largess, one of Billard’s attorneys, said Wednesday that the flipflopped argument and final ruling was “very disappointing for Mr. Billard, and a little difficult for him to understand.”
In a statement, the ACLU, ACLU of North Carolina, and law firm Tin Fulton Walker & Owen called the decision “heartbreaking.”
Billard “wanted nothing more than the freedom to perform his duties as an educator without hiding who he is or who he loves,” they said in the statement.
“Every worker should be entitled to equal protection under the law, and the Supreme Court held as recently as 2020 that this fundamental freedom extends to LGBTQ workers,” the statement said. “While today’s decision is narrowly tailored to Mr. Billard and the facts of his employment, it nonetheless threatens to encroach on that principle by widening the loopholes employers may use to fire people like Mr. Billard for openly discriminatory reasons.”
ACLU VS. BECKET
ACLU attorney Joshua Block, who successfully argued before the Fourth Circuit in a landmark Virginia case upholding the rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms that match their gender identity, headed Billard’s case.
Goodrich and other Becket Fund lawyers previously argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that a government mandate requiring private, Christian-owned companies to provide insurance coverage to employees for contraception violated constitutional protections. They also argued that a former football coach at a Colorado public high school could pray on the field after games.
Both arguments proved successful, as did Wednesday’s.
As a teacher, the court of appeals ruled, Billard was a “vital messenger” of the school’s faith. According to the school’s statement of beliefs, he was to “model and integrate the teachings of Jesus in all areas of conduct in order to nurture faith and inspire action.”
That title placed him within the ministerial exception, which “prohibits federal and state governments from becoming involved in religious leadership disputes.”
“Catholic or not, [CCHS] requires its employees to conform to Catholic teachings,” the court found. “CCHS prohibits employees from engaging in or advocating for conduct contrary to the moral tenets of the Catholic faith, including the Catholic Church’s rejection of same-sex marriage.”