A labor court issued a ruling Thursday that marked a significant setback for the Catholic Church in Germany, one of the country’s largest employers.
The Federal Labor Court said Nov. 5 that a Catholic employer unlawfully discriminated against an employee by dismissing her for formally leaving the Church.
The judgment followed a preliminary ruling in March 2026 by the European Court of Justice, the European Union’s highest court.
The Diocese of Limburg, where the employee’s former employer is based, expressed disappointment at the Federal Labor Court’s judgment and said her former employer should consider whether to take the case to the Federal Constitutional Court.
The case raises far-reaching questions about whether formally leaving the Church is grounds for dismissing employees and how German Catholic charities can preserve their identities while complying with employment equality laws.
What’s the background? What did the ruling say? And what are the implications for the Catholic Church in Germany?
What’s the background?
The German Church and its sprawling network of institutions employ around 800,000 people, out of a total population of roughly 83 million.
If the Catholic Church in the U.S. employed a similar proportion of the country’s population, it would have around 3.3 million employees. In reality, the U.S. Church employs an estimated 1 million people.
This gives a sense of the German Church’s vast size as an employer, though of course it differs both culturally and structurally from the U.S. Church.
The vast majority of German Church employees work for Caritas. The charity says it employs 770,952 people in 25,130 affiliated institutions and services. They assist more than 13 million people annually through its health, social-care, and welfare services.
Diakonie, the equivalent social welfare organization for Germany’s Protestant churches, has around 687,000 employees. The Catholic Church and Protestant Church in Germany are often described as together forming Germany’s second-largest employer after the state.
The Federal Labor Court ruling, which is also relevant to Protestant employers, concerns the Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung, a pregnancy-counseling service run by a Caritas-affiliated association in the Diocese of Limburg.
An employee identified in court documents only as JB began working for the association in 2006. The mother of five was on maternity and parental leave continuously from June 2013 until May 2019.
In October 2013, she formally declared before a local authority that she was leaving the Catholic Church. She said she took the step because the Limburg diocese levied an additional church contribution on Catholic members in interreligious marriages with higher-earning spouses, on top of the church tax.
The local authority notified the relevant tax authorities and the Church of her departure. The association learned of the step through a change to her payroll-tax information. It asked her to rejoin the Church, but she refused.
The association concluded that her departure breached the Church’s duty of loyalty (Loyalitätspflicht), which formed part of its employment rules. It argued that employees were required to uphold its Catholic ethos, including protection of the unborn and encouraging women to continue their pregnancies.
The association did not dismiss her until nearly six years after she left the Church, when her continuous maternity and parental leave ended on May 31, 2019. In a letter dated June 1, 2019, the association told her she was being dismissed immediately or, failing that, that her employment would end on Dec. 31, 2019.
But at the time, the association also had two non-Catholic employees in pregnancy counseling. They were members of the Protestant Church of Germany.
JB challenged the decision in a labor court, which ruled that her dismissal was unfair. The association appealed to the Federal Labor Court, Germany’s highest court for employment matters. In February 2024, the court referred questions about the interpretation of EU anti-discrimination law to the European Court of Justice.
The ECJ issued its preliminary ruling in March 2026. It concluded that under EU law, a Catholic association cannot dismiss an employee simply for leaving the Church, if it “employs other persons to carry out the same duties as those of the employee in question, without requiring that those persons be members of that church,” and if the employee “does not openly act in a manner that is antagonistic to the church concerned.”
The court said that in such cases, an occupational requirement to be a Church member is not “genuine, legitimate, and justified.”
It added that the association must ensure that, when it dismisses employees for formally leaving the Church, “the alleged risk of undermining its ethos or its right of autonomy is probable and substantial, so that the imposition of such a requirement is necessary and proportionate.”
The case returned to the Federal Labor Court, which concluded that the association had discriminated against JB on grounds of religion.
What did the ruling say?
A press release announcing the Federal Labor Court’s decision said that an employer cannot lawfully dismiss someone solely because they have formally left the Church if it employs non-Catholics to do the same work and the employee has not publicly acted against the Church.
The press release said the court ruled that the employee did not need to be a member of the Catholic Church to perform her duties.
“This is clear from the fact that, at the time of the dismissals, the defendant also assigned non-Catholic employees to pregnancy-counseling duties,” it said, explaining that her formal departure from the Church did not in itself constitute a breach of loyalty for this reason.
“The mere fact that she had left the Church did not establish that she would no longer provide pregnancy counseling in the manner required by the defendant,” it said.
The court also found that her dismissal without notice was invalid on procedural grounds, because the employer had not acted within the statutory two-week period after learning in 2013 that she had left the Church.
The Limburg diocese voiced frustration at the Federal Labor Court’s ruling, saying it would carefully examine its full reasoning, with JB’s former employer, when it is released, probably in several weeks’ time.
“The Diocese of Limburg respects every person’s freedom to decide on their religious affiliation. At the same time, the Church’s right to shape and credibly fulfill its mission in accordance with its own understanding is protected,” it said.
“From a Catholic perspective, leaving the Church affects one’s bond with the religious community itself. The fact that someone may continue to share certain individual Church beliefs therefore does not fully capture the significance of this step.”
The diocese said that if its review of the full judgment concluded that the court did not take full account of Germany’s constitutional guarantees, the employer would need to consider a constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court.
What are the implications?
According to Germany’s Basic Law, which serves as the country’s constitution, churches have a right to self-determination. The right to oversee their own affairs extends to the ability to set their own employment rules.
The European Court of Justice ruling and Federal Labor Court judgment assert that the Church’s autonomy is not absolute. Church employers must comply with Germany’s anti-discrimination laws. Any requirement that a specific role be reserved to Catholics must be justified by the nature of the work and the circumstances in which it is carried out.
German Church employers will, in future, need to apply the membership requirement more cautiously, especially in cases where both Catholics and non-Catholics perform the same duties.
The rulings could increase pressure on Church employers to open up more positions to non-Catholics. This might accelerate an already existing trend, caused in part by a shortage of skilled workers in Germany, especially in the healthcare, childcare, and social work fields in which Caritas specializes.
The judgments could also encourage some German Catholics employed by Church institutions to consider formally disaffiliating, since they make clear that leaving the Church does not automatically justify dismissal in certain circumstances.
Some employees may have remained Church members partly because they feared losing their jobs if they formally left. The rulings might convince them there is a way of retaining their positions while no longer paying church tax. If this became a trend, it would be costly for the Church, not only in terms of membership but also revenue.
The financial and membership stakes may help explain why the Limburg diocese was quick to raise the prospect of a constitutional complaint.
Strangely enough, the Diocese of Limburg didn't dismiss its bishop, Georg Bätzing, when he left the Catholic Church many years ago...
Wow, there are a lot of interesting parts to this story! Without implying any particular part is more worthy of discussion than the others, I was surprised to hear someone could be on (paid?) parental leave for 6 straight years; that's nearly half of her overall 13-yr tenure at the organization! Is this a peculiarity to charity employers, or could such situations occur at any employer?