Top State Courts Tackle ‘Ministerial Exception’ to Job Bias Laws

A gay lawyer may be able to show an evangelical Christian organization serving Seattle’s homeless population violated state law when it failed to hire him as a staff attorney because of his sexual orientation and future marriage plans, the Washington Supreme Court ruled.

But the religious-employer exception in Washington’s Law Against Discrimination isn’t constitutionally invalid on its face, the state justices said in a divided opinion. Instead, Matthew Woods may be able to show the exception is unconstitutional as applied to him because he wouldn’t have been a minister if hired, the court said Thursday.

Meanwhile, a professor at a ...