United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-2954 MICHELLE FITZGERALD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RONCALLI HIGH SCHOOL, INC. and ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF INDIANAPOLIS, INC., Defendants-Appellees. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. No. 19-cv-4291 — Richard L. Young, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2023 — DECIDED JULY 13, 2023 ____________________

Before FLAUM, BRENNAN, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. Michelle Fitzgerald worked for Ron- calli High School—a Catholic high school run by the Archdi- ocese of Indianapolis—for fourteen years. After providing Fitzgerald years of exceptional performance reviews, the school declined to renew her one-year employment contract because it contended her same-sex marriage was contrary to the school’s religious mission. Fitzgerald sued the school and 2 No. 22-2954 Archdiocese for sex discrimination, and the defendants raised the ministerial exception as a defense. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on this ground, and Fitzgerald appealed. We affirm. I. Background For fourteen years, Michelle Fitzgerald worked for the de- fendants as a guidance counselor and Co-Director of Guid- ance. She was, by all accounts, a good and effective employee and earned years of stellar performance reviews during her tenure at Roncalli. But in 2018, the defendants declined to re- new her one-year employment agreement, explaining that her same-sex marriage was contrary to the Catholic faith. Shortly after Fitzgerald was placed on administrative leave, her Co- Director of Guidance, Lynn Starkey, informed Roncalli that she too was in a same-sex marriage. Like with Fitzgerald, the school decided not to renew Starkey’s employment agree- ment. Fitzgerald and Starkey brought separate lawsuits against the school for, among other things, sex discrimination under Title VII. The cases were assigned to the same district court judge. Starkey’s case proceeded to summary judgment first, which the district court granted in favor of the defendants. We affirmed the decision in Starkey v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Inc., 41 F.4th 931 (7th Cir. 2022). About two months after our decision in Starkey, the district court granted summary judgment to the defendants in Fitz- gerald’s case, as well. Although the court acknowledged nu- merous genuine factual disputes in the record, it found that Starkey foreclosed Fitzgerald’s case. This timely appeal fol- lowed. No. 22-2954 3

II. Analysis There is no dispute that the defendants fired Fitzgerald be- cause of her same-sex marriage and that Title VII prohibits this kind of sex discrimination. See Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1744 (2020). But the defendants contend that certain exceptions, exemptions, and protections guard their actions from statutory liability. The district court granted summary judgment on the ministerial exception. Our analysis begins and ends there. The First Amendment provides, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” U.S. Const. amend. I. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. E.E.O.C., 565 U.S. 171, 176–77 (2012), the Supreme Court held that this language bars employment discrimination suits “when the employer is a religious group and the employee is one of the group’s ministers.” This is what has long been called “the ministerial