Ethical Culture Leaders are the movement's answer to the clergy question and the terminology is chosen with care: they are trained, examined and certified by the American Ethical Union, and the word "ordained" is avoided because there is nothing to ordain them into. What they do is indistinguishable in practice from ministry — Sunday addresses, weddings, memorials, namings, pastoral counselling, teaching the children's programme — and the legal system has treated them accordingly, which is how the movement ended up with religious tax status it did not entirely want. Washington Ethical Society v. District of Columbia in 1957 held the society a religious corporation for exemption purposes, and the Supreme Court cited that case four years later in the footnote to Torcaso v. Watkins listing Ethical Culture among religions that do not teach belief in the existence of God. Societies are member-funded and governed by elected boards, and Leaders are employees rather than authorities.