Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung (Social policy – Equal treatment in employment and occupation – Professional activities of Churches and other organisations whose ethics are based on religion or belief – Judgment) [2026] EUECJ C-258/24 [in French] was an Opinion by the Court on a referral by the German Federal Labour Court on the interpretation of Council Directive 2000/78 which, inter alia, bans employment discrimination on the basis of religion or belief.
Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung, as its name suggests, is a counselling service for pregnant women that operates in accordance with the norms of the Catholic Church. All staff members working in Catholic counselling centres commit in writing to respecting those norms, which stipulate, in essence, that all pregnancy counselling aims to protect the life of the unborn child and must therefore be guided by the desire to encourage the pregnant woman to continue the pregnancy and accept her child [22].
Ms JB, a mother of five, started working at the Association in 2006 as a pregnancy counsellor; in October 2013, however, she made a declaration before the competent local authority, pursuant to the national provisions, that she was leaving the Catholic Church. Her ground for doing so was that the Diocese of Limburg levied, in addition to the State church tax, an additional church levy on Catholics who, like JB, were in an interfaith marriage with a high-earning spouse [24]. After unsuccessfully attempting to persuade JB to rejoin, the Association dismissed her on 1 June 2019, on the grounds that she had left the Church. In the pregnancy counselling service in which JB was working, the Association employed four Catholics and two non-Catholics [25]. She sued for unfair dismissal, and her claim was upheld at first instance and by the State Landesarbeitsgericht. The Association appealed to the Federal Bundesarbeitsgericht, which referred two preliminary questions to the CJEU:
1: Must national legislation be considered compatible with EU law, in particular with Directive 2000/78, read in the light of Article 10(1) and Article 21(1) of the Charter, which states that a private organisation whose ethics are based on religion may require its employees not to withdraw from a particular Church during the course of their employment, or that the organisation is entitled to make the continuation of the employment relationship conditional upon an employee who has withdrawn from a particular Church during the course of his or her employment becoming a member again, provided that it does not otherwise require persons working for it to belong to that Church and that the person working for it does not engage in publicly anti-Church activities?”
2: If the answer to the first question is yes, what other requirements, if any, apply under Directive 2000/78, read in the light of Article 10(1) and Article 21(1) of the Charter, to justifying such a difference in treatment based on religion?
The Grand Chamber ruled as follows at [88]:
Article 4(1) and (2) of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, read in the light of Article 10(1) and Article 21(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as follows:
It precludes national legislation under which a private organisation whose ethics are based on a religion may require an employee who is a member of a particular Church practising that religion not to withdraw from that Church during the course of their employment under penalty of dismissal, or, in order to continue their employment, to rejoin that Church after having withdrawn from it, where
– that organisation employs other persons to perform the same functions as those of the employee in question, without requiring them to be members of that same Church, and
– the employee does not engage in publicly perceptible activities hostile to the Church in question,
When, in view of the nature of the employee’s professional activities or the context in which they are carried out, those professional requirements are not essential, legitimate, and justified with regard to the ethics of the said organisation.
Comment: The additional church levy on Catholics in an interfaith marriage with a high-earning spouse (What????) makes one wonder about breach of Article 8 ECHR (respect for private and family life), read in conjunction with Article 14 (discrimination). But obviously, in the real world the EU Directive was the more appropriate route for litigation.
[With thanks to Religion Clause.]