“The Kentucky Court of Appeals has issued a sweeping invalidation of seminary tenure in the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Jones. “They have turned a CME layman and a Jewish academic into ministers of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).”  That in itself, he said, violates religious freedom.

When is a non-minister a minister?

The Kentucky Court of Appeals weighed that question on Friday when it denied the appeals of two former professors at Lexington Theological Seminary who claimed they were wrongfully dismissed in 2009.

One is Jewish, the other a Protestant but part of a different denomination than the one affiliated with the seminary.

Neither are ordained — yet the court said both are ministers, legally speaking.

The rulings said that secular courts can’t pass judgment on a religious institution’s hiring and firing of “ministers” because that would be meddling into the business of faith groups protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The professors, Jimmy Kirby and Laurance Kant, had challenged their dismissals in 2009, which took place when the small, historic seminary declared a financial emergency, abolished faculty tenure and cut staff.

The professors alleged, among other things, that the decision violated their rights as tenured professors at the small, historic seminary.

Kant and Kirby argued that the faculty handbook was essentially a legal contract stating they could be removed only through due process for misconduct or failure to do their jobs.

Denying them even a foot in the courthouse door to claim a breach of contract means that seminary tenure contracts “would not be worth the paper on which they are printed,” attorney Christopher Miller had argued on Kant’s behalf.

Kant is Jewish and challenged the concept that he could be deemed a minister at a Christian seminary.

Kirby belongs to the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, while the seminary’s affiliate is the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Kirby, who was the only African-American professor at the seminary when he was dismissed, had also alleged racial discrimination.

But the Court of Appeals affirmed earlier rulings in Fayette Circuit Court, which concluded it had no jurisdiction over the firings.

While it acknowledged Kant and Kirby were not ordained clergy of the Disciples, the appellate court said their work was so tied in with the religious mission of the school that, for legal purposes, they qualified as ministers.

The decisions came in separate rulings by two three-judge panels — with a 2-1 decision in Kant’s case and a 3-0 ruling in Kirby’s.

“We cannot escape the fact that the seminary is inherently a religious institution, training the future leaders of their faith,” said Judge Michael Caperton wrote in the Kirby case, echoing the rationale in the Kant case. The seminary “is free to decide who will further the instruction of their faith.”