Federal judge bars Catholic school from using religious exemptions

A federal judge in Pittsburgh ruled Sept. 30 that Aquinas Academy, a Catholic elementary school operated by the Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, cannot use Title VII’s religious exemptions to dismiss a gay teacher’s sex-discrimination lawsuit and that a jury must decide whether the teacher counts as a “minister,” which would permit the diocese to fire him for religious reasons.

“No federal appellate court in the country has embraced the . . . argument that Title VII permits religiously motivated sex discrimination by religious organizations,” U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan wrote, quoting a 2024 Fourth Circuit decision.

Kenneth Ference was hired in August 2021 to teach sixth-grade math, science, and social studies at Aquinas. Ranjan wrote that Ference disclosed on an insurance waiver form that his health plan belonged to his same-sex partner, thus incidentally revealing his same-sex “marriage.” The school fired him, the judge wrote, “citing the school’s religious views as to same-sex relationships.” He was let go Sept. 18, 2021, about three weeks into the job. His suit names both Aquinas and the diocese as defendants.

Aquinas asked the court to rule in its favor without a trial, arguing that Title VII’s religious exemptions permit sex discrimination based on religious beliefs. Ranjan rejected that argument. 

Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Case v. Defendant that firing someone for being gay or “transgender” is sex discrimination, the opinion applied the rule that a firing is sex discrimination if the employee’s sex is a “but-for cause” of it. 

The judge also held that the “church autonomy” doctrine, which bars courts from resolving certain internal church disputes, applies in employment cases only through the “ministerial exception,” not as a standalone defense. On that exception, which covers employees who perform religious functions, he found “material factual disputes” that preclude summary judgment. 

The trial will turn on whether Ference’s actual duties, rather than his title or the school’s religious mission generally, place him in that category. A magistrate judge reached a similar view in February 2025, writing that the evidence raised “significant material issues of fact for a jury to resolve.”

Whether the ruling sets up what is known in legal circles as a “circuit split” is a harder question. A circuit split requires conflicting decisions from federal courts of appeals, and Ranjan sits on a trial-level court, so his opinion cannot create one on its own. It also does not clearly conflict with the appeals courts that have sided with religious employers. 

The Seventh Circuit ruled for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Indiana, in July 2022 in the case of Lynn Starkey, a guidance counselor at Roncalli High School whose contract was not renewed after she disclosed her same-sex “marriage.” That decision, and the 2024 Fourth Circuit decision in Billard v. Charlotte Catholic High School, rested on the ministerial exception, which depends upon an employee’s job duties. Catholic schools typically view nearly all jobs as ministerial, since the faith is intended to be woven into every subject and into the culture and environment of the school. 

Some legal commentators argue that a circuit split exists over how broadly Title VII’s religious-organization exemption reaches. A January analysis on the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, written by three attorneys, argued that the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh circuits have read the exemption broadly in some cases while the Ninth Circuit has read it narrowly. Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, in a concurring opinion in Starkey, also endorsed a broad reading. 

Ranjan, though, discussed an older Third Circuit case involving a Catholic school, Little v. Wuerl, and wrote that no appellate court has accepted the sex-discrimination argument, a characterization that those on the other side of the debate dispute.

The question could reach the Supreme Court through another case. The Fourth Circuit heard arguments in March in Zinski v. Liberty University, a case that asks how far the ministerial exception extends after the 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision. Thus far, no decision has been reached in this case. Both sides there have said they would seek Supreme Court review if they lose. 

The ruling is not a final judgment, and orders denying summary judgment are generally not immediately appealable. 

Zeale News contacted the Diocese of Greensburg to seek comment on the ruling and whether it plans to appeal. The diocese had not responded as of publication.