On 17 March 2026, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) decided in its judgment C‐258/24 (Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung) that a Catholic association cannot dismiss an employee on the sole ground that she has left the Catholic Church while simultaneously employing non-Catholics for the exact same assignment. Such a selective invocation of an organisation’s religious ethos cannot justify unequal treatment in employment relationships – in such a case, there is no evidence that the employment duties or their context objectively requires church membership. While the judgment gives due consideration to the church’s right to self-determination as guaranteed under German constitutional law, it also provides a novel way of contextualising the concept of loyalty, differentiating between the loyalty to the Catholic Church and the loyalty to the religious employer. In our view, this nuanced approach towards a tiered system of duties of loyalty offers opportunities to further foster convergence between national and European case law in balancing religious self-determination and the prohibition of workplace discrimination.
The judgment stands against the backdrop of the ongoing tug of war between the CJEU and the FCC on the balancing of the fundamental right of employees not to be discriminated on the grounds of religion or belief and the...
Highlights The $549.5 million Perfectus Aluminum settlement is more than ten times larger than the previous record for a customs-related False Claims Act (FCA) resolution and the latest in a stri...