UNITED STATES
Verdict.Justia.com
February 15, 2021
By Leslie C. Griffin
Whistleblowers do good things. They report illegal conduct to the police in order to protect others from harm. The Illinois Whistleblower Act protects them from retaliation when they report their employer’s or another person’s misconduct to the police.
Unless the court and the employer call the whistleblower a minister. If the court rules a person is a minister, she completely loses her day in court, as Mary Rehfield did recently in Mary Rehfield v. Diocese of Joliet.
I think Rehfield’s case should go to court, where either she or Joliet may win, based on the facts. That is a better rule than dismissing all the ministers’ cases because someone wants to call them a minister in court.
Lay Principal Mary Rehfield
Mary Rehfield had more than 43 years in education, including 18 years as a “lay principal” in a Catholic school. She also called herself a “lay individual,” which reflects her position in the Catholic church. She “describes her job duties as primarily secular in nature. She alleges that one of the main reasons she was hired as principal was ‘bringing order to the school administration.’” She improved the students’ education experience, gave them a new science curriculum and other better educational items, and promoted “an anti-bullying campaign.” In the church’s business, she is a lay Catholic; that means she is not a minister, or priest, the term that is usually used for Catholicism’s all-male clergy.
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