Fired gay teacher becomes first test of Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling

Lonnie Billard announced on Facebook in October 2014 that he was going to marry his partner of 14 years, just two weeks after same-sex marriage was legalized in North Carolina. While his engagement was celebrated by family and friends, he found out two months later that is cost him his substitute teaching job at a Catholic school, The Washington Post reported.

Billard sued the school for sex discrimination in 2021 and won. Now, the conservative group Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is challenging that decision, saying last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of a web designer who refused to do work that promoted same-sex marriage bolsters its case.

“If the First Amendment protects a business’s decision about which services to offer the public, it … protects a church’s decision about who is religiously qualified to fulfill the mission of a religious school,” the group wrote in a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in late June.

Litigator for the Becket Fund Luke Goodrich says the challenge is the first time the group cited the Supreme Court decision known as "303 Creative."

“There’s a long series of Supreme Court decisions protecting religious freedom and freedom of speech in various contexts,” he said. “‘303 Creative’ just feeds into that.”

The group also argued to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago that 303 Creative also bolsters its case regarding a guidance counselor fired by a Catholic school in Indianapolis.

“We all said that thousands of religious organizations all across the country ask their employees to uphold their traditional view of marriage in word and deed, and if you interpret the statute that way, it’s going to unleash lots of lawsuits against them,” Goodrich said.

Read the full report over at The Washington Post.