Readers may remember that in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the Supreme Court explicitly put to the side the question of the ministerial exception’s application to tort actions.
Here’s an interesting Florida appellate court case decided yesterday which describes some of the contours of the church autonomy doctrine in the context of relatively simple defamation and breach of fiduciary duty claims. The plaintiff joined the First Pentecostal Church of South Brevard, Inc. and he befriended the pastor at the time. The two developed a personal and professional friendship, and the pastor even sponsored the plaintiff to obtain a minister’s license in the greater Pentecostal church. At some point, however, the relationship soured when the pastor accused the plaintiff of being gay and published those accusations to the congregation, including to the plaintiff’s fiancée’s father.
Plaintiff filed a complaint for defamation and other causes of action and the defendant pastor moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the basis of the church autonomy doctrine. The lower court dismissed.
The Florida appellate court reversed. After finding that the church autonomy doctrine acts as a jurisdictional bar (rather than an affirmative defense…note that Hosanna-Tabor took a different view of the ministerial exception, and see also Howard Wasserman’s very good piece), the court held that the church autonomy doctrine did not shield an action by a minister of a church where there was no evidence that “the conduct in question had been undertaken ‘in furtherance of a sincerely held religious belief,’ and no claim that the church had failed to exercise control over its clergyman because of sincerely held religious beliefs and practices.” The First Amendment, the court concluded, “does not grant Myers, as pastor of FPC, carte blanche to defame church members and ex-members . . . . This claim can be properly adjudicated without implicating the First Amendment.”
The case is Bilbrey v. Myers, 2012 WL 2465242 (Fla. App. Dist. June 29, 2012).
Clergy Libel Suits and the Limits of Hosanna-Tabor
At my panel at the Federal Bar Council retreat this past weekend, someone from the audience asked the following question. After Hosanna-Tabor, last term’s Supreme Court decision endorsing the ministerial exception to the employment discrimination laws, what happens to tort claims by clergy against their churches? For example, what if a priest sues his church for defamation? Would Hosanna-Tabor bar such an action?
It turns out this is a real, live case. The New York Times reports that a defrocked Catholic priest, Charles Kavanaugh, has sued the Archdiocese of New York for defamation. Kavanaugh alleges that the archdiocese libeled him when it stated in a recent press release that a church tribunal had found him guilty of multiple counts of sexual abuse. Kavanaugh says this statement is untrue. The details aren’t really important here. The question is whether Hosanna-Tabor bars Kavanaugh’s suit.
The short answer appears to be no. The Hosanna-Tabor Court expressly declined to decide whether the ministerial exception barred “actions by employees alleging . . . tortious conduct by their religious employers.” So the question remains open. Would the logic of the ministerial exception bar a claim like Kavanaugh’s? It wouldn’t seem so. Kavanaugh does not seek to be returned to the ministry or even damages for wrongful dismissal. If he wins, a victory would have absolutely no effect on what Hosanna-Tabor says is the principal concern underlying the ministerial exception: a church’s ability to select those who will lead it and express its message. Of course, if Kavanaugh’s claim turns on some matter of religious doctrine, for example, whether he was espousing authentic Catholic teaching, that would be different. Civil courts are not going to get entangled in that sort of dispute. But courts should be able to decide a straight-up defamation claim on neutral principles of law. I don’t think Hosanna-Tabor poses a problem here.
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Posted in Commentary, Mark L. Movsesian
Tagged Catholicism, Constitutional Law, Defamation, Ministerial Exception, Religious Exemptions, Torts