A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling stemming from a Redford, Mich., Lutheran church and school has strengthened the independence of all religious institutions. The case may well become a landmark delineating the separation of church and state.

The high court ruled in a suit involving an employment discrimination claim made by a teacher and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Redford's Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran church and school. There are two kinds of teachers at the school, secular contract instructors and "called" teachers, who undergo special training and questioning and then become a member of the "teaching ministry" and hold the title of "commissioned minister."

The claimant in the Redford case was a called teacher. She left the school to deal with a health issue. When she returned, she was denied re-employment. She sued under the Americans With Disabilities Act, claiming job discrimination.

It is a tenet of the denomination that members are not to resolve disputes by invoking the legal process. The church claimed this was the reason for the teacher's dismissal. It also invoked the "ministerial exemption" from the federal law, which says that religious institutions are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act in disputes with employees who are clerics.

The government argued that while the teacher had religious instruction duties, the bulk of her time was devoted to teaching secular subjects.

The justices all held that the government had no jurisdiction in this case. The government, the court said, is barred from second-guessing who is and is not a "minister" or other cleric. The teacher in this case, the justices said, clearly opted to become a member of the teaching clergy and underwent special instruction and questioning by other clerics to receive her title. To try and get around the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion and the ministerial exemption in the federal law by measuring the amount of time a church employee devotes to strictly religious duties is to miss the point. The government cannot, said Chief Justice John Roberts, use a "stopwatch" to justify its actions.

Allowing the government to do so, continued Roberts, "interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs." This, he continued, violates the clause of the First Amendment that guarantees the "free exercise" of religion.

It is in the nature of government that it will expand its powers, which is why the Constitution draws lines over how and when it will do so. Here, all the justices implied, the government crossed the line.

Interestingly, conservative Justice Samuel Alito and liberal Justice Elena Kagan joined in a concurrence to contend that the court's ruling should extend to any worship group's leaders, regardless of whether they are formally ordained in the sense of Christian priests or ministers.

The unanimous ruling is important in that it carves out an arena in civil society where the actions of private citizens, in making decisions regarding their religious officials, cannot be overruled by the government.

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