Court dodges NY’s blogging question, ends case on ministerial exception
Jessie Sander alleged she was fired over an off-duty anti-Zionism blog post; on December 16, 2025, New York’s top court dismissed her case.
Sander v. Westchester Reform Temple opens with a familiar HR problem: what happens when an employee’s off-hours speech collides with an employer’s mission? Jessie Sander, the plaintiff, alleged she was terminated from her teaching job at Westchester Reform Temple after she co-authored a blog post critical of Israel and Zionism. She sued the Temple and its leadership under New York Labor Law § 201-d(2)(c), which prohibits an employer from taking adverse action against an employee based on legal “recreational activities.”
The Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Halligan, did not decide the question at the center of Sander’s legal theory: whether section 201-d’s protection for “recreational activities” can reach blogging or, more broadly, “the public expression of one’s views.” The court noted it had not previously considered the scope of section 201-d on that point and observed that the Legislature enacted the statute in 1992, “well before the proliferation of various mechanisms for disseminating information online.” Still, the court said it would reserve that statutory-interpretation question “for another day.”
Instead, the case turned on a different doctrine that matters most for religious organizations and those who work with them: the ministerial exception, which “precludes application of employment discrimination laws to claims involving an employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers.”
Sander’s allegations began in May 2021, when she received an offer for the position of “Full Time Jewish Educator” at the Temple. The offer letter stated that her responsibilities would include teaching in “Jewish Learning Lab classrooms for 15 hours a week,” as well as “family and parent education, social justice programming, field trips and other off-site programs, communications, administrative support, and writing articles for Synagogue publications.” The letter also described aspects of the Temple’s “mission,” including “support[ing] the development of a strong Jewish identity” and “bringing Torah to life and inspiring Jewish dreams.”
Soon after she began work, Sander alleged that a rabbi at the Temple met with her about a blog post she had recently co-written. The post said, among other things, that the authors felt compelled to “speak out against Israel's [sic] most recent attack on Gaza” and “reject[ed] the notion that Zionism is a value of Judaism.” Sander alleged she and the rabbi discussed the meaning of Zionism, and that she assured him she respected the Temple’s position and would not share her views on the job. She also alleged that the rabbi later expressed complete confidence in her teaching abilities. Nonetheless, she was fired less than a week later.
The procedural history was quick and decisive. Supreme Court dismissed the complaint, reasoning that it alleged Sander was terminated for the content of her blog posting, not the act of blogging. The Appellate Division affirmed on the same basis and declined to address other defenses raised by the defendants. The Court of Appeals granted leave to appeal, then affirmed the dismissal on December 16, 2025.
The high court’s reasoning focused on the offer letter as documentary evidence. Defendants argued the ministerial exception applied, and the court agreed, concluding the letter “conclusively establishes that her core teaching responsibilities were religious, rather than secular, in nature.” It pointed to specific duties described in the letter, including guiding programs such as “Shabbat, Havdalah, and other teen led events and initiatives,” planning and attending “Confirmation” experiences, supporting the “Rabbi’s Table initiative,” and teaching through “Chevruta (1:1 tutoring for our learners),” “Pre-bimah tutoring,” and “Parsha of the week.” Those descriptions, the court said, left little doubt she was charged with “educating young people in their faith.”
The court acknowledged that the ministerial exception is typically fact-intensive and “generally not amenable to resolution on a motion to dismiss.” But it emphasized that Sander worked in the position for less than three weeks, and said discovery was “unlikely to yield additional facts about her job responsibilities.” On that record, it held the offer letter alone was enough to establish the defense.
For HR leaders, the takeaway here is less about who “wins” the argument over blogging and more about how quickly a case can end without the court ever reaching the main workplace-policy question. In this decision, the Court of Appeals expressly said it “need not resolve” whether Labor Law § 201-d covers blogging or “the public expression of one’s views,” and instead said it would “reserve this question of statutory interpretation for another day.” At the same time, the court affirmed dismissal because the ministerial exception barred the claim, reasoning that the offer letter “conclusively establishes that her core teaching responsibilities were religious, rather than secular, in nature.” For readers tracking New York’s off-duty conduct law, that leaves the core section 201-d question the court identified – how far “recreational activities” extends to online expression – unanswered in this case.
A concurring opinion by Judge Rivera agreed with the result but would have affirmed on different grounds, concluding that even assuming Sander’s blogging was a recreational activity under section 201-d, her post created a “material conflict of interest” with the Temple’s business interest and was therefore unprotected by the statute.
The bottom line is narrow but clear: Sander’s claim was dismissed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal, relying on the ministerial exception rather than settling the scope of New York’s off-duty “recreational activities” protections.
