Guy DeMarco was employed by Holy Cross High School (Queens) as a math instructor starting in 1985.

Upon completing his first five-year term of service, DeMarco was advised that a contract renewal would not be offered to him, and he left the employment of the school.

The school filed a motion for summary judgment, claiming that the non-renewal of DeMarco's contract was due to performance issues.

The appellant argued that summary judgment would be appropriate, because enforcement of labor statutes against religious organizations was unconstitutional under the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Since statutes prohibiting discrimination by race, gender and national origin were already found applicable to religious organizations, it was logical (and a reasonable interpretation of the legislative history) to extend the prohibition against age discrimination to religious organizations as well.

The determination of whether a position is ministerial in nature looks almost exclusively at the amount of time that an employee spends on religion-oriented tasks.