Washington, D.C.— The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Europe’s final arbiter of human rights disputes, decided 9-8 today that the autonomy rights of religious institutions—here, the Catholic Church—trump the rights of religion teachers to mount a public attack on church teachings.In the case of Fernández Martínez v. Spain, the Grand Chamber found that a Catholic bishop in Spain could decide not to renew the contract of a teacher of Catholic religion who had joined a public campaign to oppose the Catholic Church’s practice of celibacy for priests. The Grand Chamber held that “the proximity between the [teacher]’s activity and the Church’s proclamatory mission” “is clearly very close.” That meant he “was voluntarily part of the circle of individuals who were bound, for reasons of credibility, by a duty of loyalty towards the Catholic Church” and he could have his contract not renewed because he failed to live up to that duty.

“If government can dictate who teaches a particular religion, then government can dictate what the content of that religion is,” said Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at Becket and expert consultant to third-party interveners in this case. “Today the Grand Chamber recognized that for churches to be truly autonomous they must be able to require their teachers to show loyalty to church beliefs.”

Rassbach assisted with a third-party brief submitted by Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell. The origins of this dispute concern the termination of a state high school religion instructor’s teaching contract. In Spain, teachers who teach a particular religious community’s beliefs to schoolchildren serve at the discretion that the community’s spiritual leadership to ensure parents and students are receiving instruction from those who share their convictions. Mr. Fernández Martínez, a former priest in the Roman Catholic Church, taught official Church doctrine for nearly six years with the local bishop’s approval. In 1997, the bishop declined to renew Mr. Fernández Martínez’s contract because he publicly opposed the Church’s position on priestly celibacy. Mr. Fernández Martínez appealed to a local employment tribunal asserting that expulsion for publically sharing personal views violated his right to autonomy in his personal life, since he himself was a former priest who decided to reject personal celibacy. Spain’s Constitutional Court, the ECHR’s Third Section, and now the Grand Chamber all rejected his claim. In a remarkable dissent from the Court’s decision today, the ECHR judge appointed by the government of Russia, Dmitry Dedov, directly attacked the Catholic Church and its practice of priestly celibacy, calling the practice “totalitarianism” and adding his opinion that “the celibacy rule contradicts the idea of fundamental human rights and freedoms.”

“Whether Catholic priests should be celibate or not is something for the Catholic Church to decide, not government officials, and not judges,” said Rassbach. “Judge Dedov’s chilling dissent shows just how high the stakes are here. The dissent should be condemned by all friends of human rights as a call to gross government interference with religious practice that ought to belong to Europe’s past.”

The ECHR’s protection of church autonomy parallels the successful outcome of a similar Becket case, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC. In 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that government cannot interfere with religious organizations’ ability to select people who communicate their mission, vision, and doctrine. Today’s decision also builds on another Becket case at the ECHR, Sindicatul “Pastorul cel bun” v. Romania, which protected the right of the Romanian Orthodox Church to autonomy in how it governed relationships between bishops and priests.

Becket is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions—from Anglicans to Zoroastrians. For 19 years its attorneys have been recognized as experts in the field of church-state law. Becket recently won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which The Wall Street Journal called one of “the most important religious liberty cases in a half century.”For more information, or to arrange an interview with one of the attorneys, please contact Melinda Skea, media@becketlaw.org, 202.349.7210.

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WASHINGTON, DC –   The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, the final court of appeal within the European human rights system, today made a groundbreaking decision in Sindicatul “Păstorul cel bun” v. Romania affecting the rights of religious groups in Europe. In an 11-6 ruling, the Grand Chamber held that the Romanian Orthodox Church’s right of religious autonomy trumped the right of dissident Romanian Orthodox priests to create a trade union. The proposed trade union would have been able to organize strikes against the Church.

“Church autonomy is good for the church and good for the state,” said Eric Rassbach, Deputy General Counsel for Becket, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.  “A church is not truly autonomous—and its members not truly free to exercise their chosen faith—if bureaucrats can force the church to change its millennia-old traditions at the request of dissident factions. And a government can’t be neutral on matters of faith if it is deciding who’s in charge of a church.”

The Sindicatul case concerns a group of priests of the Romanian Orthodox Church who sought to form a trade union against the wishes of their bishops. The Romanian courts and the Romanian government found that the establishment of such a “rogue” union would violate the Church’s freedom of religion. The employees appealed to the ECHR, and the Third Section (a smaller panel of ECHR judges) found that the employees’ right to unionize trumped the Church’s beliefs about the duties of loyalty that a priest owes to his bishop.

In its ruling today overturning that decision, the Grand Chamber said that “Respect for the autonomy of religious communities … implies … the right of such communities to react, in accordance with their own rules and interests, to any dissident movements emerging within them that might pose a threat to their cohesion, image or unity. It is therefore not the task of the national authorities to act as the arbiter between religious communities and the various dissident factions that exist or may emerge within them.” The Grand Chamber went on to hold that in refusing to recognize the dissident trade union, Romania “was simply declining to become involved in the organisation and operation of the Romanian Orthodox Church, thereby observing its duty of neutrality.”

Becket’s brief argued that both European and American law recognize a strong right of religious autonomy preventing government interference with a church’s internal affairs. The brief was signed by Professor Michael W. McConnell of Stanford Law School and joined by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, headed by Professor W. Cole Durham of the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University.

“True autonomy for religious organizations of all sorts is becoming even more important as Europe and America become increasingly religiously diverse,” said Professor McConnell.  “In this area, government governs better when it governs less.”

Becket is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions—from Anglicans to Zoroastrians. For 18 years its attorneys have been recognized as experts in the field of church-state law. Becket recently won a 9-0 victory in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which The Wall Street Journal called one of “the most important religious liberty cases in a half century.”

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For more information, or to arrange an interview with one of the attorneys, please contact Melinda Skea at media@becketlaw.org or call 202.349.7224.

WASHINGTON, DC – On Friday, 8 February 2013, the European Court of Human Rights announced its rejection of the Juma Mosque Congregation’s appeal against the government of Azerbaijan. The ruling came more than eight years after the mosque first sought relief from the Court when the mosque’s building was seized by government security forces and the mosque’s members expelled in 2004.

The mosque was targeted by the authorities because it would not agree to replace its existing religious leader, Ilgar Ibrahimoglu Allahverdiyev–a prominent democracy and religious liberty activist–with a government-appointed imam. Without a government-appointed and -controlled imam, the authorities refused to register the mosque, which meant the mosque could not own or rent property. The mosque had sought relief in the Azerbaijan courts and had then appealed the case to the ECHR with the help of Becket Law. The mosque sought the ability to register itself as a legal entity without submitting to the appointment of a government imam and to remain in the mosque building it had used for worship for the more than 12 years since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In its decision, the ECHR did not reach the merits of the mosque’s religious freedom claims, basing its ruling instead on technical legal defenses raised by the government. With respect to the mosque’s claim for registration, the Court held that the mosque should have brought suit against a different government agency in addition to the ones it had sued. And with respect to the mosque’s building, the Court held that the original permission from the government to use the mosque could be revoked unilaterally without regard to whether the revocation was meant to suppress the mosque. The ECHR’s decision means that the mosque cannot legally operate in Azerbaijan or use its building, which is located in the historic center of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and is one of the oldest houses of worship in Azerbaijan.

“Justice for the Juma Mosque Congregation has been both delayed and denied,” said Eric Rassbach, Deputy General Counsel of Becket and the lawyer that filed the Mosque’s appeal in April 2004. “It is bad enough that the Court rested its decision on dubious factual defenses by the government, but to take eight years to reach this decision is doubly damaging because it left the mosque’s rights in limbo for so long.” “What’s worse is that this decision will only embolden autocratic governments to engage in registration abuse against minority or dissident religious groups, especially in the former Soviet space,” Rassbach added.

Registration abuse occurs when a government uses its discretionary power to deny legal identity to a religious organization on arbitrary grounds. It is a widespread phenomenon in countries in transition to democracy and especially the former Soviet states; registration as a legal entity is typically denied to minority, non-traditional, or dissident religious groups.

The background of the case is rooted in the struggle for democracy in Azerbaijan. Allahverdiyev was targeted by government security forces after a 2003 post-election crackdown on dissenting voices in Azerbaijan. After first taking refuge in the Norwegian Embassy, Allahverdiyev was later arrested and given what the ECHR, in a separate appeal, found to be an unfair trial.

Becket was co-counsel on the case with leading European human rights advocate Prof. Bill Bowring of the University of London, Birkbeck College School of Law.

Becket Law  is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions—from Anglicans to Zoroastrians. For 18 years its attorneys have been recognized as experts in the field of church-state law. Becket recently won a 9-0 victory in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which The Wall Street Journal called one of “the most important religious liberty cases in a half century.”

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For more information, or to arrange an interview with one of the attorneys, please contact Melinda Skea at media@becketlaw.org or call 202.349.7224.

Washington, DC.- Today Becket filed a friend of the court brief at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France in the Sindicatul case we blogged about here. The case is one of the most important cases for religious liberty in Europe in years. The stakes are particularly high for religious groups, because the case will decide whether employed clergy can unionize without their church’s consent.

Becket’s brief emphasizes that churches, synagogues and other religious organizations have a right to order their internal affairs without government interference. Drawing on the recent Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor, the brief argues that just as the conscience of a person – how a person decides what he believes – is absolutely protected from government interference, so too should the processes by which a church decides what it believes be left to that church, not government officials. The Becket Fund’s brief argues that in fact European law and American law are converging on a consensus position of strong protection for religious autonomy.

Becket was happy to partner on the brief with Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell and Professor Cole Durham of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies of the J. Reuben Clark Law School.

For more information or to arrange an interview with a Becket attorney, please contact Melinda Skea at  media@becketlaw.org  or 202-349-7224. Interviews can be arranged in English, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

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Becket Law is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. For over 20 years, it has defended clients of all faiths, including  Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians (read more). ”