Sins of Omission: MLive article on lawsuits leaves out essential information in regards to the plaintiffs involved

Last week, MLive ran a story with the headline, Catholic church, school lawsuits against Michigan civil rights law thrown out.

The article is a follow up to a story they posted last December, involving a Catholic School and a Catholic Church, specifically Sacred Heart Academy in Grand Rapids and St. Joseph Catholic Church in St. Johns.

The lawsuits filed by St. Joseph’s and Sacred Heart Academy both were in response to the expanded version of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, where the two Catholic institutions believed that new sex and gender protections in the law prevent the institutions from hiring and teaching according to their faith.

According to the MLive article: 

St. Joseph church claimed, in part, the Supreme Court’s decision last year threatened its affiliated school’s “religious mission,” which includes teachings “that marriage is a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman, that sexual relations are limited to marriage, and that human beings are created as either male or female.” 

Sacred Heart, similarly, claimed it would have to hire faculty and staff who oppose the faith, speak messages that violate doctrine and refrain from articulating beliefs in teaching and advertising to prospective students or job applicants.

Sacred Heart Academy said they would go so far as to shut the school down if they felt that practicing their faith as they think it needs to be practiced is compromised.

This dynamic of faith groups filing lawsuits against State governments has been going on for several decades now, but the amount of lawsuits has increased in recent years.

Sins of Omission

While the details of the lawsuit are reported on adequately, the MLive story omits some of the key players in these lawsuits. First, the law firm representing St. Joseph’s Church is Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which claims to represent all faith groups, even though their board seems to lean to the right, like those connected to the Federalist Society.   

The Sacred Heart Academy is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Alliance Defending Freedom as a Hate Group on the Hate Map, with the following list of grievances:

• Supported the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad
• Defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad
• Linked homosexuality to pedophilia
• Claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society

According to the site SourceWatch.org, the Alliance for Defending Freedom is essentially a non-profit committed to countering the legal stance of the ACLU. In addition, the Alliance Defending Freedom has been taking on lots of high profile cases across the US, specifically when Christian Institutions believe that their right to practice their faith as they see fit, is being threatened by the secular world.

Lastly, the MLive article fails to mention that the Sacred Heart Academy is closely connected to the Grand Rapids-based group, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.  The  pastor of Sacred Heart Church is the Rev. Robert Sirico, who is also the founder and President of the Acton Institute. Plus there are members of the Board of Directors of Sacred Heart Academy to also have direct connection to the Acton Institute, as we reported on in September of 2020.

These sorts of connections and the law firms representing these two Catholic institutions are vital to the public’s understanding of these legal cases. Therefore, the omission of this context is nothing short of a dereliction of journalistic duty on behalf of MLive. Considering how critical these legal battles are to civil society, the public needs to know who these players are.