submit that, in doing so, the majority blazes an unduly broad trail for the ministerial exception, and that the retaliatory discharge count and others should survive its application. I disagree with the majority’s rationale in one other significant respect. In my view, the majority improperly expands the ministerial exception when it holds that the exception protects, and thus bars Linklater’s use of, the entirety of Pastor Rufus S. Lusk’s February 4, 2001, statements to the congregation. I. The Ministerial Exception A. Scope The “ministerial exception” to antidiscrimination laws typically prohibits state inquiry into religious-based employment decisions by churches and other religious organizations. See Montrose Christian Sch. Corp. v. Walsh, 363 Md. 565, 593, 770 A.2d 111, 127 (2001) (<HOLDING>). Religious-based employment decisions
holding that disaffiliated church had de facto dissolved when last vote of its full membership was to dissolve and to transfer assets to mother church holding that members of a church congregation lacked sufficient interest to support intervention in an action by the church itself challenging the designation of the church as a landmark holding that a church was entitled to employ only members of its faith holding that a union had a first amendment right to employ a salaried attorney to represent members pursuing workers compensation claims holding the federal unemployment tax act section exempting service performed in employ of church after which florida molded its unemployment law was meant to apply to schools that have no separate legal existence from the church and therefore employees working within such schools are in employ of the church