The Quiet Architecture of Religious Freedom at Work

Fábio Ferreira Nascimento is a Brazilian attorney and PhD candidate in law at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

A few years ago, if someone had suggested that multinational corporations would become important laboratories for religious freedom, many scholars of law and religion would have been skeptical.

After all, corporations are not churches. They are not courts. They are not the democratic or civil society institutions we usually associate with protecting freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). And yet that is precisely where some of the most interesting FoRB-related developments are taking place today.

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Religious Freedom, Equality, and Non-Discrimination in Employment Cases: Interview with Cole Durham

W. Cole Durham, Jr. is Emeritus Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University, where he held the Susa Young Gates University Professorship and Founding Director of the Law School’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies. He was interviewed by Dmytro Vovk.

Before the interview, we asked you to think about a case of a line of cases you have modified your views about. What have you chosen?

My plan is to talk mainly about Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012) and the follow-up case, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru (2020). These are both cases that deal with the religious autonomy doctrine, and I think they represent a concerning trend.

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The EUCJ Ruling in Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung v. JB and Its Impact on Ecclesiastical Labor Law in Germany

Judith Hahn is Professor of Canon Law at the University of Bonn and McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

On 17 March 2026, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) issued a judgment regarding Catholic institutions in Germany and their employment relationships, in Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung v. JB. The ruling established that a Catholic employer, in this case a pregnancy counseling office at Caritas, cannot terminate a contract of employment solely on the basis of the employee’s leaving the Catholic Church. The Court determined that such a dismissal constitutes unequal treatment, unless the employee’s church membership is a genuine, legitimate, and necessary requirement for the specific occupation. While acknowledging the right of churches to self-determination in employment matters, the CJEU determined the dismissal to be unlawful, as the employer did not generally require staff to be Catholic and had employed non-Catholics in similar roles.

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