How has the exemption from the nondiscrimination provision of title VII been interpreted by the Court?

The court then applied the Lemon test to the exemption and, in doing so, considered the impact of the exemption from the nondiscrimination provision of title VII. The first prong of that test, that the law have a secular purpose, was met even though the exemption benefited only religious organizations. The court explained that having a secular purpose does not require that the purpose of the challenged law be unrelated to religion. The secular purpose test is aimed at preserving governmental neutrality in religious matters. "Under the Lemon analysis, it is a permissible legislative purpose to alleviate significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions." (Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) The court next examined the impact of the law to which the exemption applied and concluded that, notwithstanding a prior limited exclusion for religious activities, the title VII ban on discrimination continued to impose a significant burden on religious organizations by requiring them to predict, on pain of serious sanctions if they were wrong, which of their activities a court would deem to be religious. (483 U.S. at pp. 335-336, 107 S.Ct. 2862.)