Minnesota’s Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether a transgender woman fired from a Catholic school can move forward with a discrimination lawsuit.
Reyzl Grace MoChridhe worked for a year as a librarian at the Academy of Holy Angels, a Catholic high school in Richfield. According to the lawsuit, she told school administrators that she planned to transition; administrators told her that if she did, the school would not re-hire her for another year on the job. Administrators ended her contract.
MoChridhe sued the Academy of Holy Angels and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2024, alleging that ending her employment violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
That law includes some exemptions for religious institutions. But MoChridhe argued that her job at the school was secular, and did not require her to be Catholic or follow the church’s beliefs. She informed the school before she was hired that she is Jewish, and was hired anyway.
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis asked the court to dismiss MoChridhe’s lawsuit, citing those exemptions to Minnesota’s human rights law. Two lower courts have sided with the Archdiocese, arguing that state and federal law bar courts from adjudicating the school’s religious employment rules. MoChridhe appealed, bringing the case to the supreme court.
Greta Weissner of the St. Paul nonprofit Gender Justice is representing MoChridhe. She told the supreme court Tuesday that discrimination protections should still apply to MoChridhe.
“That balance is just completely different when a religious institution chooses to hire a secular person who is not a member of their religion and who has not submitted or agreed to adhere to their faith-based principles,” Weissner said.
MoChridhe’s lawsuit asks for monetary damages, and for a civil penalty for the archdiocese and the Academy of Holy Angels.
“When I lost my job, I lost more than a paycheck,” MoChridhe said in a statement following the hearing. “I lost a community I cared about and work that was intensely meaningful. My students wanted me there, and my colleagues wanted me there, but I was still terminated just for being honest and seeking the care that I needed. No one should have to choose between making a living and living a lie.”
At the supreme court, attorney for the Archdiocese Luke Goodrich said the school was within its right to have employment policies that allow it to let go of a transgender employee.
“The complaint in this case seeks to penalize a Catholic archdiocese and a school for maintaining undisputedly sincere religious standards for employment,” Goodrich said.
Attorneys for MoChridhe said that the case should be allowed to continue, and not dismissed.
“There's no principle that says an employment discrimination case has to go away as soon as you realize that there's a religious employer. That's not how this works,” said Jess Braverman, the legal director at Gender Justice.
In a statement following the hearing, Goodrich said the courts have ruled in favor of religious institutions in several similar cases.
“We look forward to another ruling affirming that the Catholic Church has the freedom to run Catholic schools according to Catholic values,” Goodrich said.
If the court dismisses the case, Braverman said it’s possible the lawsuit could still be pursued; only the archdiocese has motioned to dismiss it, so they could still go through the courts with the lawsuit against the Academy of Holy Angels. Braverman said next steps will depend on the details of the court’s ruling.
