Church Jesus Christ Latter-Day v. Amos Here

¶ … Church Jesus Christ Latter-Day v. Amos Here details: Read case titled, "Corporation Presiding Bishop Church Jesus Christ Latter-Day v.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day v. Amos

As a church employer in your religion, what reason would you give for requiring that the building engineer be of the same religion?

In the case of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day v. Amos, although the gymnasium in question was open to the public who were not Mormons, the express intention of the religious institution running the facility was to promote its faith and a positive image of its faith. Having a building engineer who was not a Church member and who engaged in practices forbidden by the church such as smoking, drinking caffeine or otherwise violated Mormon teachings thus impeded the church to use its promotion of the gym for that express purpose (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman 2009: 528). The building engineer, who was fired because he did not qualify for a 'temple recommend' sued on the basis that his religious liberties were violated due to the fact that his position was not a religious one and the organization in which he served was a gym that open to the public, not only Mormons. The Mormon Church claimed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited religious discrimination in employment was a violation of the Establishment Clause because it prohibited from hiring whomever they desired based upon Church teachings (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman 2009: 528).

The case's appeal was eventually heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not accept the Mormon argument that Title VII violated their religious liberties, it did validate their right to hire whom they chose in honor of the principle of non-interference in religious activities and thus decided that Amos' claim of discrimination in employment was non-valid. "Section 702 satisfied this criterion, since it ensured that the government would not determine for religious organizations what they could count as religious activities…In this case, the government allowed for a church to advance its religion but did not directly intervene….By allowing religious organizations to employ whom they pleased, they state became less entangled in religion" (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day v. Amos, 1987, The Oyez Project). The government law did not dictate whom the Mormons could hire; it merely declined to involve itself in aspects of the Church, which included offering the gym to the public yet discriminating in hiring. The Court's decision underlined the difficulty in delineating between secular and sacred activities and thus sacred and secular occupations. After all, novice monks may clean the monasteries in which they live as part of their religious duties and do other building and janitorial work. The Mormons might argue that having the employee sent an inaccurate message to gym-goers about the principles of their faith. This difficulty of drawing a line caused the Court to err on the side of caution.