EU court outlines limits of loyalty for religious employers

(CN) — A German counselor lost her job after leaving the Catholic Church over a tax dispute, but in a ruling Tuesday, Europe’s top judges made clear that walking away from a faith should not in itself put one’s livelihood on the line.

A German labor court asked the Court of Justice of the European Union if a Catholic pregnancy counseling organization could lawfully fire an employee for formally quitting the Church, or whether that crosses the line under EU rules banning religious discrimination.

The judges’ answer lands somewhere in the middle. Religious identity can matter at work, especially in faith-based roles, but it cannot be treated as a blanket condition. What counts is whether there is a real, job-specific reason for the requirement.

“A private organization whose ethos is based on the precepts of the Catholic Church cannot treat differently … its employees providing pregnancy counselling depending on whether or not they are members of that church,” the court said, adding that such a distinction is lawful only if there is “a direct and objectively verifiable link between those activities and the requirement … and that occupational requirement is genuine, legitimate and justified having regard to that ethos.”

JB, the employee at the center of the case, worked as a counselor at a Catholic pregnancy support organization in Germany, advising women in line with Church teachings. Nothing in the record suggested she acted against that mission.

She later chose to leave the Catholic Church, objecting to an additional levy imposed on some members in mixed-religion marriages with higher-earning spouses, which meant paying extra church tax. That decision led to her dismissal and a legal challenge in which she argued the requirement to remain a Church member amounted to discrimination.

“In very limited circumstances, a difference of treatment may be justified where a characteristic related to religion or belief … constitutes a genuine and determining occupational requirement, when the objective is legitimate and the requirement is proportionate,” the EU law says.

Measured against that standard, the employer’s case fell short. The court found no convincing link between JB’s duties and a requirement to remain a member of the Church, especially since non-Catholic employees performed the same work.

“It is thus apparent that she was dismissed on the sole ground that she has left the Catholic Church and that she has refused to rejoin that church,” the judges wrote.

The court also made clear employers must back up claims of disloyalty with concrete, verifiable evidence. That proof was missing here. JB’s decision to leave the Church did not translate into a failure to carry out her duties or support the organization’s approach.

Lucy Vickers, an equality law professor at Oxford Brookes University, called it “a welcome decision,” saying the court has followed the same approach as in earlier cases by weighing competing rights rather than giving automatic priority to either side.

She said the judgment makes clear that while religious employers can impose “genuine, legitimate and justified” requirements to protect their identity, antidiscrimination rules must be applied strictly. In this case, she added, the balance came down on the employee’s side, with the court recognizing both the importance of religious autonomy and the worker’s right not to face discrimination.

Taking a more matter-of-fact view, Mark Hill KC, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame’s London Law Programme and a specialist in law and religion, said the ruling breaks little new ground.

He called it “an anodyne and unremarkable determination,” in line with earlier decisions of both the EU court and the European Court of Human Rights. The judgment, he said, reinforces that “genuine occupational requirements” must be narrowly framed and strictly interpreted — particularly where church membership is not necessary to perform the job. While some church leaders may be disappointed, he added, “discrimination lawyers will be entirely unsurprised.”

Not everyone agrees with that reading.

Javier Martínez-Torrón, a law professor at Complutense University of Madrid and president of the International Consortium on Law and Religion Studies, said the case shows how fine the line is between religious autonomy and equality rules, calling them “borderline cases” where that divide is “very thin.”

While he said the court’s reasoning is sound, he warned the ruling goes too far by stepping into matters that should be left to religious institutions. In his view, the judgment effectively replaces a church’s own moral assessment with a secular one, even though questions of loyalty are rooted in religious values.

For Martínez-Torrón, recognizing religious autonomy means accepting that such institutions may follow a different logic from secular courts. He said judges should be more deferential and avoid second-guessing how a religious body defines loyalty, unless the decision is clearly arbitrary or violates fundamental rights.

From the employer’s side, Gregor Thüsing, a labor law professor at the University of Bonn who represented the Catholic counseling organization, pointed to what he saw as a key takeaway: The ruling gives real weight to the Church’s right to self-determination.

He said the court made clear that the balancing of interests “is ultimately a matter for the national courts,” and that it “is not the Court’s role to act as an arbiter” on whether leaving the Church amounts to a breach of loyalty. The fact that non-Catholics are also employed, he added, may matter, but it is not decisive on its own and must be weighed as part of the broader assessment.

Counsel for the employee did not respond to a request for comment.

The EU court’s ruling is final on the legal question, leaving no further appeal at that level. The case now goes back to Germany’s Federal Labor Court, which must apply the interpretation and decide whether the dismissal itself was lawful under the clarified standard.

Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.