According to the state’s Catholic Church, a ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court that the state’s civil rights legislation prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation may be in contradiction with religious freedom.
The Michigan Catholic Conference stated on July 29 that the ruling will “usurp the legislature’s role in the democratic process, present constitutional problems for people of faith, and place in jeopardy religious persons and entities who wish to serve others in the public square.”
The Catholic Conference expressed concern that the ruling “expressly does not address” whether applying the revised Michigan civil rights statute will infringe on state and federal constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. It agreed with a justice who wrote in disapproval that the majority view “poses constitutional problems relating to religious liberty” and that there are “strong arguments” to support this claim.
Sexual orientation and gender identity are now included in the definition of sex discrimination by the 5-2 decision in Rouch World v. Department of Civil Rights.
The decision related to two court matters. In the first, a female same-sex couple had asked the owners of an event venue to organise their wedding, but they had turned them down because it would have gone against their religious convictions. In the second, the proprietor of a body hair removal business had refused to remove the hair from a male who identified as a transgender woman as part of his alleged gender transition on the basis of religious conviction.
The plaintiffs requested a ruling that the Michigan Department of Civil Rights erred in defining sexual orientation and gender identity as such in an interpretive statement published in 2018 and that they are not protected under state civil rights law.
The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1977 in Michigan forbids discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, colour, sex, national origin, age, height, and weight as well as family or marital status.
“Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily constitutes discrimination because of sex,” the supreme court’s summary said, explaining that denying equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations of a place of public accommodation or services constitutes illegal sex discrimination.
“Because one’s sex is necessary to the identification of sexual orientation, discrimination on that basis is discrimination on the basis of sex,” the supreme court said, according to the summary.
The Bostock v. Clayton County ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which expanded the definition of “sex” in federal employment law to include sexual orientation and gender identity, served as the foundation for the Michigan court’s ruling.
As a result of the ruling, Title VII of the federal civil rights act already protects individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed grave concern over the ruling, arguing that such interpretations “redefine a fundamental element of humanity” and “promulgate the view that sexual identity is solely a social construct rather than a natural or biological fact.”
The Michigan Supreme Court decided that Natalie Johnson’s request for the Rouch World Event Center in Sturgis to host her same-sex wedding had been unlawfully denied based on the Bostock ruling. According to the top court, the event facility would not have refused Johnson services if he had been a man.
The Michigan Catholic Conference had filed a December 2021 amicus brief in support of the event center owners and their “right to act in the public square according to their religious beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
The brief argued that the state legislature is the body constitutionally charged with creating and amending state laws. This lawmaking process “permits people of diverse beliefs to cooperate in crafting laws that simultaneously protect both vulnerable persons and the conscience rights of Michigan residents.”
In cases of alleged discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, the conference said, the majority opinion “expressly does not address” whether enforcement under the state civil rights law would violate religious liberty constitutional protections at the federal and state level.
“Michigan Catholic Conference promotes public policies that protect conscience rights and the freedom for religious entities and individual persons to serve others, particularly those in need and those living on the economic margins,” the conference said Friday. “We profess that marriage is the union of one man and one woman united through life and open to the birth of children, even as society and culture has recently moved in a historically different direction. Christians are not called to conform to the culture, but to speak to it with truth and love.”
“The Catholic Church teaches that all people deserve to be treated with respect and compassion,” the conference added. “We urge citizens throughout their daily lives to approach and speak to one another in ways that acknowledge their inherent dignity, as every human person has been created in God’s image and likeness.”
“We will continue to advocate for religious liberty rights and seek to uphold constitutional principles that provide legal protections for those who serve others in the public square — particularly the poor and vulnerable — according to their religious mission,” the Michigan Catholic Conference said.
The Catholic conference’s amicus brief argued that civil rights department officials had requested “a sweeping ruling that would necessarily affect religious beliefs and entities” but these officials refused to address questions of religious liberty, saying they may be weighed in a future case.
The brief invoked a hypothetical lay Catholic institution’s job interviews with two women with same-sex attractions, one of whom states she is in a romantic same-sex relationship but the other says she does not act on her feelings, following Catholic teaching.
“Consistent with Catholic teaching, the organization might hire the first, but not the second, on the grounds that, by her actions, the second woman has demonstrated an opposition to Church teaching,” the brief said.
The question is whether a man and a woman would be treated differently for being in a romantic relationship with a woman, according to state officials, who would determine that this disparity is not acceptable.
There is no assurance that a Catholic institution’s distinctions will be valued by state officials. Although these “dilemmas” can be avoided by making statutory compromises, the department omitted this step by providing its own interpretation. This precludes the “type of careful compromise” that prior precedents on religious liberty have arrived at.
A few successful religious objections to the severe enforcement of anti-discrimination policies have been made. Two Catholic child placement organisations were settled for at least $800,000 in March by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. An agreement that prohibited state funding for adoption organisations that refused to place children with same-sex couples had been successfully challenged by the agencies under the First Amendment.