Maintaining religious freedom for religious schools: Options for legal protection after the Ruddock Review

This article places the current political debate on the religious freedom of religious schools to ‘discriminate’ against staff and students in its theoretical, international, constitutional and domestic legal context. It briefly overviews the situation which led to the debate before setting out this context. The article argues that religious schools ought to have the discretion to select and regulate members of the school community as a function of religious freedom. Since there seems to be agreement that the current use of exemptions is problematic, the article recommends that a principled and considered legislative approach that provides schools with positive legal rights to select and regulate staff and students may be the best way forward.