PEOPLE who work for religious organisations, or in jobs subject to religious control, should think carefully about the consequences for their personal lives. They cannot claim the right to privacy that an employee of a secular organisation would expect. That seems to be the message that courts on both sides of the Atlantic are handing down. Take the case of Alyce Conlon, who used to be a "spiritual director" for an evangelical organisation that works on American campuses and tries to persuade students to lead Christian lives. Her employer, the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, proclaims that it "believes in the sanctity of marriage and desires that all married employees honour their marriage vows." In March 2011 she told her bosses that she was having marital difficulties, and was put on leave (initially paid, then unpaid) and told to try repairing her marriage. She was dismissed at the end of the year for failing to heal the domestic rift. She sued her employers for discrimination, asserting that two male colleagues had been treated less harshly when their marriages failed.

Yesterday a federal appeals court rejected her grievance, citing the "religious exception" to employment discrimination cases. It drew on the so-called Hosanna-Tabor case, settled by the Supreme Court in 2012, when the court unanimously ruled that federal discrimination laws do not apply to religious leaders at religious organisations. A teacher who was laid off from a Lutheran school in Michigan failed in her complaint on grounds that she was technically a minister.

If Ms Conlon's case had been on the other side of the Atlantic, she might not have fared much better. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last year rejected the case of a Spanish retired teacher and former priest who was laid off, at the behest of the church, because he married and joined a movement in favour of married priests. In both cases, the courts gave decisive weight to the "freedom" of religious bodies to act according to their own principles.

In another closely watched saga, the ECHR is considering the complaint of a religion teacher in Croatia who was laid off because he divorced and entered a second, civil marriage. The European Centre for Law and Justice, a conservative lobby group, has submitted arguments in support of the church's position. It asserts that religious bodies have an established right to demand "increased loyalty" (over and above the loyalty that any employer would expect) from people under their authority, especially if they are in a visible, representative role. The church's right to scrutinise religion teachers is established by a 1997 concordat between Croatia and the Holy See. For secularists the story will be a perfect example of the power that such concordats give the church over matters that should be left to earthly authorities.

In Britain, notes Tom Heys, an employment lawyer with the firm of Lewis Silkin, the law specifically protects people from suffering discrimination because they marry, but there is no equivalent provision protecting those who divorce. A religious employer might try to argue that a conventional personal life was an "occupational requirement" for an employee in a prominent position, though the religious exception to equality laws is fairly narrow.

Anywhere in Europe, plaintiffs in such cases can and do argue strongly that they have suffered violation of their rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a private life. But in recent times, the rights of religious bodies over their adherents have been given pride of place.