Appellate Court Rules Against Fired Gay Church Worker in Discrimination Case

Lonnie Billard, left, with his husband, Richard

Reversing a 2021 decision, a U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that a Catholic school had the right to fire a gay teacher after he announced his engagement to another man on social media.

This appellate ruling comes after a multi-year process that began in 2014, when Lonnie Billard was fired from Charlotte Catholic High School (CCHS), North Carolina, where he had taught English and Drama for more than fifteen years. According to Billard, his relationship with longtime partner Richard Donham was not a secret at the school, but he was terminated after announcing the couple’s engagement on Facebook.

Subsequently, Billard filed and won a federal discrimination lawsuit against the school and the Diocese of Charlotte, on the grounds that his termination “violates prohibitions against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” In 2021, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn ruled in Billard’s favor, determining that federal employment protections against sex discrimination under Title VII —which a 2020 Supreme Court ruling declared also protects workers fired for being gay or transgender—were violated. The court also found Billard was not a minister, as the school and diocese claimed, and therefore they could not be exempted from such protections, given he was a lay employee teaching secular classes.

After Billard won in 2021, the diocese appealed, bringing the case before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Now, the Associated Press reports that the 2021 decision was reversed:

“Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, writing Wednesday’s prevailing opinion, said that Billard fell under a ‘ministerial exception’ to Title VII that courts have derived from the First Amendment that protects religious institutions in how they treat employees ‘who perform tasks so central to their religious missions — even if the tasks themselves do not advertise their religious nature.'”

Although he taught secular subjects, the new decision argued that Charlotte Catholic expected all teachers to integrate faith throughout the curriculum, regardless of subject. Thus, because Billard “played a vital role as a messenger of CCHS’s faith, he falls under the ministerial exception to Title VII,” wrote Harris.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, the law firm helping Billard file his lawsuit, released a joint statement calling the reversal “a heartbreaking decision for our client who wanted nothing more than the freedom to perform his duties as an educator without hiding who he is or who he loves.”

The decision could have further negative implications on the rights of LGBTQ+ employees, the statement suggests, “by widening the loopholes employers may use to fire people like Mr. Billard for openly discriminatory reasons.”

This appellate court’s new ruling is disappointing for Billard and for the Catholic community at large. Such a decision does not communicate victory to the LGBTQ+ Catholics and our allies who wish to pass on our faith to the next generation, faith in a God who created and sanctifies all people and inspires us to treat one another justly. It is certainly not a victory when churches are granted additional avenues to discriminate, because discrimination is contrary to Catholic teaching.

—Phoebe Carstens (they/them), New Ways Ministry, June 3, 2024