Robert Tuttle

Robert Tuttle

Robert Tuttle is the David R. and Sherry Kirschner Berz Research Professor of Law and Religion at the George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 1994, as well as Professor of Religion (by courtesy) in the University’s Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. After graduating from GW Law School, he earned a Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Virginia; he also holds a BA from the College of William & Mary, and a masters degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. With Ira C. Lupu, Tuttle was the co-director of the Legal Tracking Project of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, which studied government funding of religious social services. He is the author or co-author of dozens of articles and reports in the field of church-state law, along with the book Secular Government, Religious People (Eerdmans, 2014). He serves as legal counsel to the Washington, DC, Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a consultant for Lutheran Services in America, and has provided legal advice to numerous religious institutions. The views stated here are his own, and not necessarily those of his clients.

Columns by Robert Tuttle

Permalink to The Perils of Relying on the Wrong Clause—Grounding the Ministerial Exception at the Supreme Court

The Perils of Relying on the Wrong Clause—Grounding the Ministerial Exception at the Supreme Court

18 Mar 2020

Ira C. Lupu and Robert Tuttle

GW Law professors Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. Tuttle explain why the path the U.S. Supreme Court might be about to take in ministerial exception cases—relying on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment—is dangerously misguided. Lupu and Tuttle argue that the ministerial exception rests primarily on the Establishment Clause and is strictly limited to employment decisions about who leads or controls a faith community, or who transmits a faith.