There was such a decision today. The Huffington Post's Mike Sacks' explains:
WASHINGTON -- Employees of religious organizations whose job duties reflect "a role in conveying the Church's message and carrying out its mission" are barred by the First Amendment from suing over employment discrimination, said the Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion handed down Wednesday morning.
The decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was the first time the Supreme Court had endorsed the "ministerial exception" to discrimination protections that many courts of appeals have come to recognize over the past several decades.
"Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts on behalf of the entire Court. "By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group's right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments."
Paul Horwitz, a constitutional law professor at the University of Alabama and and author of "The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution," told HuffPost that the Court's decision backed up the central constitutional principle that "the church cannot administer the state, and the state cannot administer churches."There you have it! A 9-0 decision for religious freedom!
There's an additional reason why I find unanimous decisions interesting - I want to know who made the legal arguments that couldn't find a single vote in the Court? Since I'm constantly being told that Justice X is an extremist, or Justice Y is out of the mainstream, I want to know who made the argument that couldn't get a single vote from any of the nine justices?
In this case, it was the Obama Administration.
P.S. The Huffington Post article continued for another nine paragraphs without mentioning that part of the story.
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