NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago

National Labor Relations Board v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490 (1979), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that ruled that the National Labor Relations Board did not have the authority to regulate religious schools. The court ruled that the Wagner Act did not grant the board authority over religious schools and that even if it did, that would cause a worrying intrusion of the federal government into religion.

NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 30, 1978 Decided Mar 21, 1979
Full case name	National Labor Relations Board v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago et al.
Citations	440 U.S. 490 (more) 99 S. Ct. 1313; 59 L. Ed. 2d 533;
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of the regulations, 559 F. 2d 1112. cert. granted, 434 U.S. 1061 (1978).
Subsequent	None
Holding
The National Labor Relations Board does not have the power under the Wagner Act to regulate parochial religious schools.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by Stewart, Powell, Rehnquist, Stevens
Dissent	Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; Public Law 74-198, 49 Stat. 449 (Wagner Act)

This case serves as one of the foundational pillars of the ministerial exception doctrine.

Background

In 1974 and 1975, union organizations filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to unionize lay teachers from seven Catholic schools in the midwest, two that were directly operated by the Archbishop of Chicago and five that were operated by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-Southbend.

The schools unanimously rejected the attempt on the grounds that the board did not have the authority to do so, and that the free exercise clause protected the school from these regulations, but the board rejected their plea and ordered elections for union representatives to take place at the school.

The schools sued and sought relief from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which in a 3-0 decision, blocked the enforcement of the board's orders. The court rejected the argument from the board that the schools not being "entirely religious" organizations meant that the First Amendment did not impede them, a standard the board had been using the previous two years.

The board subsequently appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments on October 30, 1978.

Court's decision

The court ruled in favor of the Catholic schools, although divided with just a 5–4 split. The argument from the majority rested on two main points:

1. The Wagner Act that established the National Labor Relations Board did not give it the power to regulate parochial religious schools and
2. Even if it did, it would likely be unconstitutional as it would impede the schools' religious mission.

For the first point, the court looked at the legislative history of the act and concluded that it was not the intention of Congress to give the board the power to regulate parochial schools. During the debates on the act, the majority argued, it was clear the main concern was the unfair practices of private employers, not of any public entity, and the act remains silent on specifically religious institutions. The opinion cites the Taft-Hartley Act, which amended the Wagner Act to exclude non-profit hospitals from the definition of employer specifically, the standard of which could also be applied to religious schools. An amendment to the original act passed in 1974 to reinclude nonprofit hospitals in the definition was also clear in its language not to also include specifically religious hospitals. However, the court was silent on whether this ruling applies to any other kind of religious organization.

For the second point, the court references the Lemon test established seven years earlier, arguing that the board's order violated it by creating an undue entanglement of the government with religion. Since "Religious authority necessarily pervades the school system.", applying these rules to the schools would violate the Free Exercise Clause.

Dissent

Justice William Brennan, joined by three others filed a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the majority was wrong to state it the board regulating religious schools was against the intent of the congress that originally passed the Wagner Act. Brennan stated the majority applied a way too demanding burden for determining the intent of a law that was written as broadly as the Wagner Act, saying: "The Act's wording, its legislative history, and the Court's own precedents leave 'the intention of the Congress . . . revealed too distinctly to permit us to ignore it because of mere misgivings as to power.'"

Subsequent developments

The court appeared to slightly backtrack on this case's ruling in 1985 in Tony & Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor where it ruled that the Department of Labor could enforce minimum wage regulations on behalf of lay employees of religious organizations.