Constitutional rights have been under attack in recent years. None more important than the First Amendment.
And now this Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment is utterly game-changing.
The freedom of practicing religion in the United States has been a hot topic for the past few decades.
The secularist types say that Christians and any semblance of Christianity should be wiped from society all together and that they shouldn’t be able to practice Christianity in any public form whatsoever.
This is evident in the way the radical Left has been attacking Christians for merely living out their faith, especially Christian business owners who have at times refused to do business with someone who is in blatant sin according to their faith.
Consider the countless Christian bakeries or wedding coordinators who have been under attack by the radical Left for simply denying to perform a service for a couple of the same gender, which is a sin in the Bible.
The latest high-profile instance of religious persecution is from a case that’s coming out of New Jersey where a Catholic school is being sued by a former teacher.
You see, back in 2014, the Roman Catholic school St. Theresa had hired Victoria Crisitello but shortly after her hiring she got pregnant.
Victoria Crisitello was unmarried when she became pregnant, which raises morality concerns for the Roman Catholic school. So naturally they had to do something about this breach of her oath as a teacher at the Christian school.
The action they took was to fire her from her position because they felt as though it was a line that was crossed.
So what was her response? She sued the school accusing them of persecuting her for exercising her rights to do what she wants when she is not at the school and working.
That lawsuit made its way all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court where a ruling has now been handed down with serious implications for the First Amendment.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the school saying that St. Theresa was well within its rights to require any and all employees to abide by a code of conduct, which includes not getting pregnant out of wedlock.
Victoria Cristello signed a code of conduct back in 2011 when she started as a part-time employee of St. Theresa, and this was brought up as critical evidence in defense of the Catholic School during the case.
“Because the Legislature thus expressly prescribed an exception to liability under the LAD based on a religious institution’s reliance on the tenets of its faith in setting employment criteria, we agree with St. Theresa’s that the religious tenets exception is an affirmative defense which must be pled and proven, and the party asserting it carries both the burden of production and persuasion,” Judge Solomon, the author of the majority opinion wrote.
As with any case that is ruled in a state Supreme Court, there’s a chance it could be brought up to a federal level either in the appellate court system or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
But that is unlikely to happen given that the ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court was unanimous. Typically, the federal court system will take that into account for determining whether they actually want to take up a case.
The decision being unanimous means its likely to stick, which is a major win for the Catholic school and Christians in New Jersey and America as a whole.
This is just the latest win for religious freedom which comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that a Christian website designer had every right to deny service to a same-gender couple.
Stay tuned to the Federalist Wire.
