Friend:

Under the guise of a ministerial exception, religious employers are destroying the careers and livelihoods of people whose jobs have nothing to do with religion. Will you help Americans United stop them?

Gregg Tucker is not a minister. He was an exemplary teacher and student-life director who devoted 14 years of his life to the students at Faith Christian Academy in Arvada, Colorado. 

But in 2019, Gregg was fired because he tried to combat pervasive racism at the school. Certain parents complained, and administrators—elevating their fear of lost tuition revenue over the education and well-being of their own students—showed him the door.

Shelly Fitzgerald isn’t a minister, either. She was an outstanding guidance counselor who devoted decades of her life to an Indiana Catholic high school, her own alma mater. But when administrators learned she was married to a woman—her partner of more than 20 years—she, too, was fired.

Shelly Fitzgerald (center, left picture) and Gregg Tucker (far right) with their families.

In both cases, these religious employers are trying to use a legal doctrine called the ministerial exception to avoid responsibility for blatantly violating Gregg’s and Shelly’s civil rights. Claiming these lay staff members had a significant role in religious education (they didn’t!), the schools hid racist and anti-LGBTQ motives to upend two lives.

AU is representing both Gregg and Shelly in lawsuits. Will you help us win justice for them? Please support Americans United and our work to stop the blatant misuse of the ministerial exception to justify discrimination. Click here to contribute now.

Courts should not allow religious freedom to be distorted as a license to discriminate and deny basic civil rights. But we are in danger of seeing the legal concept of the ministerial exception become a free pass to justify discrimination at work in any and all religious institutions.

Our plaintiffs have strong cases. But both schools are backed by a lavishly funded religious law firm eager to expand its crusade to corrupt true religious freedom. This firm and its allies have insisted that receptionists at religious nonprofits, janitors at religious schools, and even nurses at religiously affiliated hospitals are “ministers.” If they succeed, countless jobs will be in jeopardy and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of employees across the country will lose protection of the fundamental civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, age, gender identity, and more. We can’t let that happen. 

Speak up for Gregg and Shelly. Help AU give them the strongest possible representation by supporting us right now.

In solidarity,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO