A National Labor Relations Board regional director has ordered an adjunct professor union election at St. Xavier University, a Catholic educational institution in Chicago.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called NLRB v. Catholic Bishop, held that the First Amendments religion clauses limited the NLRBs power to force religious colleges and universities to accept unionization.  The regional director essentially concluded that St. Xavier wasnt religious enough to enjoy the protections of the First Amendment in the unionization context. 

To be sure,  it is unfortunate that some religious educational institutions have become less religious over time.  At the same time, it is always troubling when government bureaucrats make intrusive inquiries and reach subjective conclusions about the relative religiosity of a school.  Sometime such assessments are the basis for denying religious schools access to otherwise available government benefits, on church-state grounds, because they are too religious.

The Insider Higher Ed news story is here, and the Chronicle of Higher Ed story is here.

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