Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 961328.pdf

Citation: Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 961328.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/961328.pdf ↗

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Ockletree held the religious nonprofit exemption rests on reasonable grounds.

Majority at 13. I disagree.

The Ockletree court could not agree on a common line of reasoning

establishing reasonable grounds for the exemption so it establishes no precedent on

that point of law. The lead opinion and Justice Wiggins agreed reasonable grounds

existed but neither accepted the other’s reasoning. See Ockletree, 179 Wn. 2d. at

783-86 (lead opinion), 806 (Wiggins, J., concurring in part in dissent). The dissent

determined, on the other hand, no reasonable grounds existed. Id. at 797-800

(Stephens, J., dissenting).

Accordingly, Ockletree did not hold WLAD’s stated goal or purpose

encompasses fostering free exercise or avoiding entanglement with religion.

Whether reasonable grounds ultimately justify the religious nonprofit employer

exemption remains an open question.

To answer this question, we must focus on the exemption as it actually exists

and was applied in this case. The majority errs by instead aligning the statutory

exemption with the ministerial exception developed under First Amendment

doctrine. See majority at 13 (“To determine whether reasonable grounds exist . . .

in this case, we look to the ministerial exception outlined by the United States

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For the current opinion, go to https://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/wareports/.
Woods v. Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, 96132-8
(Stephens, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part)

Supreme Court.”). But the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence

recognizing a limited constitutional privilege to discriminate has no bearing on

whether the Washington legislature articulated reasonable grounds for granting

religious employers a categorical privilege in RCW 49.60.040(11). This is