In Boliak v. Father Michael P. Reilly et al, No. 153941/16, 2025 WL 3672342 (N.Y. App. Div. 1 Dept. Dec. 18, 2025), the court, inter alia, held that the lower court improperly dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment claims under the “ministerial exception.”
From the decision:
Plaintiffs Boliak, Maureen Smith, and Thomas Rodes were all employed by St. Joseph by the Sea High School, a private Catholic school on Staten Island. The case stems from plaintiffs’ allegations that the school’s Principal, defendant Father Michael P. Reilly, regularly subjected them to vulgar, sexist, ageist, racist and homophobic remarks and epithets. Plaintiffs further allege that defendant Robert Richard, the school’s Vice Principal, and defendant Greg Manos, the school’s Dean of Men, regularly repeated Father Reilly’s vile language and assisted in his efforts to discriminate against staff. In addition, plaintiffs allege that defendant Cardinal Timothy Dolan – the head of defendant Archdiocese of New York who appointed Father Reilly to serve as Principal – and the defendant Archdiocese knew about Father Reilly’s conduct but did nothing to stop it.
Plaintiffs’ claims for hostile work environment were improperly dismissed under the ministerial exception, which precludes some employment claims against religious institutions on First Amendment grounds (see Our Lady of Guadalupe School v Morrissey–Berru, 591 U.S. 732, 756 [2020]; see also Hosanna–Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, 181 [2012] ). Although the ministerial exception was created to protect churches from state interference in their decisions to employ and supervise ministerial employees, it was not intended as a shield from all types of workplace conduct (see Hosanna–Tabor, 565 U.S. at 196).1
Since Hosanna–Tabor, federal courts have examined the issue before us, that is, the applicability of the ministerial exception to hostile work environment claims. The courts, however, are divided as to the exception’s applicability (see e.g. Elvig v. Calvin Presbyt. Church, 375 F3d 951, 965 [9th Cir2004] [where a Presbyterian minister brought a claim for hostile work environment against her employer church, the court held that in the absence of a religious justification, the hostile work environment claim “survives the ministerial exception” defense raised in defendant’s motion to dismiss]; cf. Skrzypczak v Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, 611 F3d 1238, 1246 [10th Cir2010], cert. denied 565 U.S. 1155 [2012] [holding that the ministerial exception bars hostile work environment claims because “any Title VII action brought against a church by one of its ministers will improperly interfere with the church’s right to select and direct its ministers free from state interference”] ).
While the Court of Appeals has recognized that, in a case against a religious employer, a defendant may raise the ministerial exception as an affirmative defense to a hostile work environment claim, it has not yet determined the merit of this defense in a specific case (see Matter of Ibhawa v New York State Div. of Human Rights, 42 NY3d 744, 751 [2024] ). Therefore, in the absence of controlling caselaw, we follow the 9th Circuit’s approach and find that the ministerial exception should not be extended to apply to conduct such as unlawful harassment simply because such conduct is perpetrated by a religious employer. As the 9th Circuit observed, there is no First Amendment reason to permit the ministerial exception to shield a religious institution from its “obligation to protect its employees from harassment when extending such protection would not contravene the Church’s doctrinal prerogatives or trench upon its protected ministerial decisions” (Elvig, 375 F3d at 964).
The court concluded that “plaintiffs are correct that there is no religious justification for Father Reilly’s appalling conduct, and analyzing their hostile work environment claims would not require the Court to improperly interfere with religious doctrine or defendants’ personnel decisions” and, therefore, “plaintiffs’ hostile work environment claims should not have been dismissed on the basis of the ministerial exception.”