Liberty University to Push for Bigger Religious Job-Bias Shield

Liberty University will try to convince a federal appeals court in Richmond that it’s immune to a former studio art professor’s age bias lawsuit, in a case testing the US Supreme Court’s doctrine shielding religious employers from anti-discrimination laws.

Liberty University Inc. is slated for oral argument Thursday at the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to challenge a district judge’s decision that Eva Palmer didn’t qualify as a “minister,” which permitted her to sue the Baptist university for not renewing her teaching contract allegedly due to age discrimination.

Ruling that Palmer was a minister because Liberty required ...