Bans on “Marital Status” Discrimination: A Threat to Religious Freedom?
Greg Baylor has this post on The Center Blog, which is a resource of the Christian Legal Society. He discusses the situation at Wheaton College involving a Professor who is getting a divorce. He writes:
. . . Wheaton’s faculty handbook states that the college may retain a teacher getting a divorce “when there is reasonable evidence that the circumstances that led to the final dissolution of the marriage related to desertion or adultery on the part of the other partner.” . . .
Most courts would agree that the Constitution forbids the state from punishing Wheaton through the application of a ban on “marital status” discrimination in employment. However, it is less clear that the relevant Illinois statute actually exempts religious employers from the ban on marital status discrimination in the first place — as it should . . .