{"id":1628625,"date":"2022-08-31T17:04:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T21:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1628625"},"modified":"2022-08-31T17:04:55","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T21:04:55","slug":"indiana-supreme-court-upholds-firing-of-catholic-school-teacher-over-same-sex-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/indiana-supreme-court-upholds-firing-of-catholic-school-teacher-over-same-sex-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Supreme Court Upholds Firing Of Catholic School Teacher Over Same-Sex Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Findiana-supreme-court-upholds-firing-of-catholic-school-teacher-over-same-sex-marriage%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1628625&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/indiana\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Indiana\u2019s<\/a> Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in favor of upholding the termination of a former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/catholicism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Catholic<\/a> high school teacher due to his same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n<p>The unanimous 4-0 decision affirmed that the school is protected by church autonomy under the First Amendment in its firing of Joshua Payne-Elliott in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReligious freedom protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution encompasses the right of religious institutions \u2018to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine,\u2019\u201d Justice Geoffrey Slaughter wrote in the <a href=\"https:\/\/becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com\/20220831151405\/Payne-Elliott-Opinion.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">opinion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling affirmed that the courts must allow the church to operate without state interference.<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u201cCourts can\u2019t decide what it means to be Catholic\u2014only the Church can do that,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.becketlaw.org\/media\/court-says-archdiocese-can-decide-which-schools-are-catholic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> Luke Goodrich, VP &#038; senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the case<span data-contrast=\"auto\">. \u201cBy keeping the judiciary out of religious identity, the Indiana Supreme Court just protected\u00a0<span data-contrast=\"auto\">all<span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0religious institutions to be free from government interference in deciding their core religious values.\u201d<span data-ccp-props=\"{\" 134233117=\"134233117\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Today, the Indiana Supreme Court unanimously threw out the lawsuit. As Justice Slaughter explained: The \u201cConstitution encompasses the right of religious institutions \u2018to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government.\u2019\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/WZaETausmd\">pic.twitter.com\/WZaETausmd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Luke Goodrich (@LukeWGoodrich) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LukeWGoodrich\/status\/1565013008467763200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 31, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The history of the case reaches back to 2017 when Payne-Elliott married Layton Payne-Elliott, a math teacher at another school. In 2019, Payne-Elliott was terminated from his job as a teacher at Catholic Cathedral High School in Indianapolis over entering into a same-sex marriage in violation of church teachings.<\/p>\n<p>Payne-Elliott sued the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.<\/p>\n<p>His spouse worked as a teacher at another area school, Brebeuf Jesuit, that declined to fire him over the same issue. On June 21, 2020, the Archbishop <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrtv.com\/news\/local-news\/archdiocese-of-indianapolis-will-no-longer-recognize-brebeuf-jesuit-as-a-catholic-school\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">determined<\/a> that Brebeuf Jesuit could no longer use the Catholic name and would not be recognized as a Catholic institution.<\/p>\n<p>An Indiana trial court dismissed the lawsuit in favor of the Archdiocese, but an appeal in May 2021 by Payne-Elliott\u2019s legal representatives led to a case before the state\u2019s Court of Appeals that reversed the decision. The case was then appealed by the Archdiocese and heard by the state\u2019s Supreme Court ahead of the unanimous ruling in its favor.<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u201cThe court\u2019s decision today was a commonsense ruling in favor of our most fundamental rights,\u201d said Goodrich<span data-contrast=\"auto\">. \u201cReligious schools will only be able to pass down the faith to the next generation if they can freely receive guidance from their churches on what their faith\u00a0<span data-contrast=\"auto\">is<span data-contrast=\"auto\">. We are grateful the court recognized this healthy form of separation of church and state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indiana\u2019s Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in favor of upholding the termination of a former Catholic high school teacher due to his same-sex marriage. The unanimous 4-0 decision affirmed that the school is protected by church autonomy under the First Amendment in its firing of Joshua Payne-Elliott in 2019. \u201cReligious freedom protected by the First &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1628627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1628625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1628627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}