Cheryl Perich taught religion and a secular subject at the Michigan Hoasanna-Tabor school until she fell ill in 2004. When the school replaced her, she sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She lost the first round in 2004, but her lawyers persuaded the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to rule in her favor last year.

The church had argued that her job was not covered by employment law because it was religious and so shielded from federal regulation under the traditional “ministerial exception.” That’s a long-standing term used in courtrooms to describe religious employees’ exemption from secular employment law.

The exemption is a legal spin-off from the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. That is part of the First Amendment, and was adopted in 1791 to shield religious institutions from government regulation, such as the creation of state-funded established churches similar to the Church of England.

The administration’s legal brief, already submitted to the Supreme Court, asks the court to eliminate this ministerial exemption, and to make all but a few core religious jobs subject to secular employment law. “The Establishment Clause … provides no support for a categorical ministerial exception that would bar adjudication of this case,” said the August brief, signed by Solicitor General Donald Verilli and Thomas Perez, who heads the civil rights division.