(RNS) — A federal judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit brought against Abyssinian Baptist Church by a onetime candidate to be the historic Harlem church’s senior pastor, the sole female candidate among finalists for the role.
The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, an associate professor at Yale Divinity School, filed the complaint in 2023. The church had asked a judge to dismiss the case on the grounds of “ministerial exception,” under which religious institutions are given more latitude in personnel and other matters.
“There is no way for this Court to resolve Dr. Marshall Turman’s employment discrimination claim without becoming entangled with Abyssinian’s ecclesiastical innerworkings,” ruled U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho in a Monday (March 31) opinion for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“It is therefore not premature to apply the ministerial exception at the motion to dismiss stage of this litigation. Accordingly, because the ministerial exception applies, Dr. Marshall Turman’s employment discrimination claim against Abyssinian is dismissed.”
The ministerial exception, in some cases, prevents courts from interfering with “the employment relationship between a religious institution and one of its ministers,” according to Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case that …