otherwise cognizable claim in Texas

2008It is, in the language of Creditwatch, conduct “utterly intolerable in a civilized community,” and “bordering on serious criminal acts.” Cre-ditwatch, 157 S.W.3d at 818.

2008It is, in the language of Creditwatch, conduct "utterly intolerable in a civilized community," and "bordering on serious criminal acts." Creditwatch, 157 S.W.3d at 818.

2025Yet in the same case, the Court described the ministerial exception (i.e., the aspect of the church-autonomy doctrine at issue) as “an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not 35 a jurisdictional bar.” Id. at 194 n.4 (emphasis added).

2021In Hosanna-Tabor, however, the United States Supreme Court explained that the “ministerial exception” it recognized in that case operates “not [as] a jurisdictional bar” that affects the court’s “power to hear [the] case,” but “as an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim.” 565 U.S. at 195 n.4 (quoting Morrison v. Nat’l Austl.

2021Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 254 (2010)).

2018Under the “ministerial exception” doctrine, “if an employee is a minister, courts are precluded from reviewing the employment decision regardless of whether the claims are ecclesiastical in nature.” Shannon v. Mem’l Drive Presbyterian Church U.S., 476 S.W.3d 612, 625 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2015, pet. denied); see also Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. E.E.O.C., 565 U.S. 171 , 195 n.4 (2012) (concluding ministerial exception “operates as an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not a jurisdictional bar”).