Jose Antonio Fernandez Martinez, having been a priest since 1961, requested a dispensation from celibacy from the Vatican powers in 1984. Despite receiving no answer, one year later he entered a civil marriage and in 1991 took a job as a Catholic religion teacher in a public school in the city of Murcia. His contract was renewed every year. In November 2006, an article was published in La Verdad, describing some members of the anti-celibacy movement, among them Fernandez Martinez. The movement is opposed to the stance taken by the Church towards the questions of abortion, divorce and sexuality. The article was enshrined with a picture of the applicant's family.

In 1997, the Vatican issued a dispensation regarding the celibacy and also banned Fernandez Martinez from teaching religion. The local bishop requested that the Ministry of Education not renew his contract because of the "scandal" he took part in, and the request was satisfied. The teacher appealed to the labor court, demanding the reinstatement of his job, and the court found that not renewing his contract was equivalent to a dismissal motivated by the teacher's participation in the movement, which constituted a case of discrimination. The court ordered that he be reinstated. The Ministry filed a successful appeal. The appellate court took the view that the bishop has a right of confirming catechists' employment, and in this case he decided not to, which was the reason that the teacher's contract wasn't renewed; no "dismissal" took place.

Mr. Martinez filed a complaint to the Constitutional Court. Because of the principle of religious neutrality of the state, the Court did not speak on the relationship between the applicant and the bishop. However, it found the decision on not renewing the contract to be justified. Fernandez Martinez had put himself in the spotlight by electing to be in a news article. In doing so, he not only highlighted the fact that he is a priest with a wife and five children, but also that he's a member of an anti-clerical movement. People teaching religion are to represent a value system similar to the religion's doctrine, the Court reasoned.

Mr. Martinez then turned to the European Court of Human Rights with an appeal asserting a violation of Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights, constituted by the refusal to renew his contract. The case was forwarded to the Grand Chamber (case no. 56030/07) and a judgment was issued on June 12, 2014. The Court found that Article 8 does relate to the case, because the private choices of the applicant had an extraordinary impact on his professional life. By examining the legal basis for the priest's dismissal, the Court pointed to the agreements binding Spain and Vatican, ultimately ruling that a violation of the applicant's rights had not occurred.

The applicant could have expected his contract not to be renewed, the Court said, because of canon law and its provision of a duty of "following a Christian way of life." The interference into Mr. Martinez's private life was aimed at protecting the rights of the Catholic Church, including its autonomy in choosing catechists. A religious group must be able to exercise independence in choosing people to represent it. The role of a state is to protect legally existing churches, not to involve itself in quarrels between churches and their dissenters. Because of its autonomy, a church can demand loyalty from the people who are supposed to spread its teachings, and the Court found that no violation of Article 8 took place. The judges were, however, quite divided on the matter - the judgment passed by a single vote, with nine majority votes and eight justices dissenting.

Three separate dissenting opinions were issued, all of which found that an interference into the applicant's private life had taken place, a result of which was his loss of employment, and that this was inconsistent with provisions of the Convention. According to the judges, the media article was of no impact on the case, as the bishop had been aware of the applicant's positions on the relevant issues well before the article was published.