IN THE SUPREME COURT OF
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No. 04-0838
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C.L. Westbrook, Jr., Petitioner,
v.
Peggy Lee Penley, Respondent
════════════════════════════════════════════════════
On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the Second District of
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Argued September 26, 2006
Justice O’Neill delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case, we must decide the constitutionally appropriate role of civil courts in resolving tort actions that arise from acts of church discipline. The defendant pastor in this case, C.L. “Buddy” Westbrook, who is also a licensed professional counselor, directed his congregation to shun Peggy Lee Penley, a former parishioner, for engaging in a “biblically inappropriate” relationship, which the ecclesiastical disciplinary process outlined in the church’s constitution required him to do. Claiming Westbrook had learned the disclosed information in a secular counseling session, Penley filed this suit against him for professional negligence.
For purposes of our review, we presume the counseling at issue was purely secular in nature as Penley claims. Even so, we cannot ignore Westbrook’s role as Penley’s pastor. In his dual capacity, Westbrook owed Penley conflicting duties; as Penley’s counselor he owed her a duty of confidentiality, and as her pastor he owed Penley and the church an obligation to disclose her conduct. We conclude that parsing those roles for purposes of determining civil liability in this case, where health or safety are not at issue, would unconstitutionally entangle the court in matters of church governance and impinge on the core religious function of church discipline. Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction.
I. Background
Penley
experienced marital difficulties with her husband, Benjamin Stone, and in
August 1998 obtained counseling services from Westbrook, a licensed professional
marriage counselor and her fellow parishioner at
In October 1999, Westbrook and
others, including Penley and Stone, broke from their
church and formed
We believe that one of the primary responsibilities of the church is to maintain the purity of the Body. We are directed by God to be holy. In recognition of the importance of this obligation, the elders will biblically and lovingly utilize every appropriate means to restore members who find themselves in patterns of serious misconduct. When efforts at restoration fail, the elders will apply the Biblical teaching on church discipline, which could include revocation of membership, along with an appropriate announcement made to the membership (Matt 18:15-17; I Cor 5:1-5; Gal 6:1, 2; 2 Thes 3:6).
The church’s constitution provides that, if a member engages in conduct that “violates Biblical standards, or which is detrimental to the ministry, unity, peace or purity of the church,” and the member is unrepentant, “the elders will follow our Lord’s instructions from Matthew 18:15-20.”[1] If the member remains unrepentant and chooses not to resign, the constitution instructs the church authority to revoke the parishioner’s membership and announce the member’s removal to the congregation. The church’s stated goal is “to encourage repentance and restoration of fellowship with the Lord and His people.”
Penley became a CrossLand member the same month the church was formed in October 1999. In applying for membership, Penley answered various inquiries contained in a document titled “CrossLand Community Bible Church Questions for Membership.” Her answers confirmed Penley’s agreement with a statement of the church’s beliefs. In response to a request to “[a]ffirm your willingness to abide by the constitution of this church,” Penley responded, “[s]ure, I can abide by the church constitution . . . willingly.”
In July 2000, Penley separated from her husband. Thereafter, Penley and Stone participated in a series of weekly counseling sessions at Westbrook’s home where couples from the church discussed how to improve their marriages. According to Penley, the Bible was not discussed in these sessions and she considered them to be an extension of her prior professional counseling relationship with Westbrook. Westbrook did not charge for these sessions, and all of the couples who participated were CrossLand members.
The marital counseling sessions proved to be unsuccessful, and Penley decided that she would seek a divorce from Stone. Around October 2000, Penley and Stone went to Westbrook’s home for what they thought would be another group session, but Westbrook and his wife were the only ones there. During a break, Penley spoke separately with Westbrook and informed him that she had decided to divorce Stone. She also confided that she had engaged in an extramarital sexual relationship. According to Penley’s pleadings, Westbrook counseled her and recommended a family law attorney she could consult. When Westbrook broached the topic of church discipline that her extramarital relationship would require, Penley informed him that she was resigning from CrossLand.
Thereafter, Westbrook and the church elders composed a letter to the CrossLand congregation concerning Penley’s actions, which they published to the membership on November 7, 2000. The letter described the three-step disciplinary process by which CrossLand members were bound as follows:
The process first involves one individual going to the brother or sister in sin. If the one caught in sin “listens,” meaning listens to the Lord and repents (changes direction), then the process is complete – “you have won your brother or sister.”
However, if the one in sin chooses not to “listen,” and continues in this pattern, the instructions are clear. A small group of two or three or more are to go back with you to the one in sin. We believe this group should be comprised of individuals who are mature and godly believers and who know and love the one in sin. If the one in sin “listens,” then the process is complete – again, “you have won your brother or sister.”
If the one in sin “refuses to listen” to this group of two or three, then the instructions are to “tell it to the church.” If the one in sin now “listens,” the process is complete – and we have “won our brother or sister.”
Notice, however, “if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.’” As somewhat of an oversimplification, this means to treat the one in sin as an outsider. Through their continuing sin, they forfeit their membership in the church, and the members of the church are to break fellowship with them.
The letter explained to the congregation that Penley intended to divorce her husband, there was no biblical basis for the divorce, she had engaged in a “biblically inappropriate” relationship with another man, and she had rejected efforts to bring her to repentance and reconciliation. Describing the disciplinary process as one of “tough love,” the letter encouraged the congregation to “break fellowship” with Penley in order to obtain her repentance and restoration to the church body. The letter admonished the congregation to treat the matter as a “members-only issue, not to be shared with those outside [the congregation].”
In November 2001, Penley sued Westbrook, CrossLand and the church elders alleging causes of action for defamation, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In response to her claims, Westbrook filed a plea challenging the court’s jurisdiction, contending the suit involved an “ecclesiastical dispute” concerning a church disciplinary matter, which the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution precluded the trial court from adjudicating. The church and the elders filed a similar motion to dismiss. The trial court granted the defendants’ motions and dismissed the case. Penley appealed the trial court’s order, but subsequently dismissed her appeal as to all defendants except Westbrook. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of all claims against Westbrook except for professional negligence, which it held concerned Westbrook’s role as Penley’s secular professional counselor and did not invoke First Amendment concerns. 146 S.W.3d 220, 233. We granted Westbrook’s petition for review to examine the trial court’s jurisdiction over Penley’s professional-negligence claim in light of the First Amendment’s religion clauses.[2]
II. Review Standard
A plea questioning the trial
court’s subject-matter jurisdiction raises a question of law that we review de
novo. See
III. Discussion
A. The First Amendment Religion Clauses
The First Amendment to the United
States Constitution, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment,
Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (1940), provides that
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .”
Government action may burden the
free exercise of religion in two quite different ways: by interfering with an
individual’s observance or practice of a particular faith, see, e.g.,
Church of the Lukumi Babalu
Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 532 (1993), and by encroaching
on the church’s ability to manage its internal affairs, see, e.g., Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94, 116
(1952). See EEOC v. Catholic
B. The Parties’ Contentions
Westbrook contends Penley’s suit encroaches upon the autonomy of churches to decide matters of internal church discipline and governance. He acknowledges that there are exceptions to the concept of church autonomy, but claims they should be narrowly drawn by allowing judicial interference in church disciplinary matters only when a claim arises from a purely secular act. Westbrook describes actions that are purely secular in nature as those that are clearly nonreligious in motivation, like intentional torts or sexual misconduct. According to Westbrook, if there is any doubt as to the secular or religious nature of a particular action, courts should proceed no further. Any less deferential standard, Westbrook claims, would require a case-by-case analysis that would in itself excessively entangle the courts with religion and infringe upon the church’s authority. In this case, Westbrook asserts, once Penley admitted that she looked to him as both a counselor and a pastor, the trial court was precluded from adjudicating her claim. The rationale, Westbrook explains, is to avoid courts having to determine which acts are done in a secular role and which are done in an ecclesiastical capacity, particularly when there is such a blend of roles, as here, that makes it impossible to perceive where one ends and the other begins.
Penley, on the other hand, argues that the doctrine of church autonomy protects religious relationships by preventing judicial resolution of ecclesiastical disputes that turn on matters of religious doctrine or practice. This protection, she argues, does not shield a licensed professional counselor from liability that arises from a secular counseling relationship simply because scripture might occasionally be discussed. According to Penley, the First Amendment does not preclude judicial review of claims that do not derive from or depend upon religious doctrine. Penley contends that categorically excluding religious relationships from judicial scrutiny would necessarily extend constitutional protection to the secular components of such relationships and place religious leaders in preferred positions in our society.
C. Civil Courts and Church Autonomy
We agree that the First Amendment does not necessarily bar all claims that may touch upon religious conduct. See Tilton, 925 S.W.2d at 677. But in order to gauge the constitutional validity of a particular civil action, we must first identify the nature of the constitutional interest at stake. When a pastor who holds a professional counseling license engages in marital counseling with a parishioner, the line between the secular and the religious may be difficult to draw.[4] In that instance, secular rules that govern the professional relationship may conflict with or impinge upon religious tenets or standards of conduct to which the church and its members have voluntarily bound themselves. Deciding which should yield requires a careful analysis of the respective interests sought to be protected.
The interest that Penley asserts concerns the confidentiality that protects communications between a licensed professional counselor and a client. See 22 Tex. Admin. Code § 681.41(x). It is Westbrook’s breach of this secular duty to maintain confidentiality that Penley contends caused her injury. Unlike resolving Penley’s originally asserted but later abandoned defamation claim, which would have required the court to delve into the religious question of whether Westbrook’s statement about the biblical impropriety of Penley’s behavior was true or false, deciding whether Westbrook breached a secular duty of confidentiality as a licensed professional counselor would not, according to Penley, require resolution of a theological matter. Because her claim does not require the court to resolve a religious question, Penley maintains her professional negligence action does not run afoul of the First Amendment.
But Penley’s
argument goes to only one area of constitutional concern and ignores another.
While it might be theoretically true that a court could decide whether Westbrook
breached a secular duty of confidentiality without having to resolve a
theological question, that doesn’t answer whether its doing so would
unconstitutionally impede the church’s authority to manage its own affairs.
Churches have a fundamental right “to decide for themselves, free from state
interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and
doctrine.” Kedroff, 344
The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for.
Watson v.
Jones, 80
This Court, too, has long recognized a structural restraint on the constitutional power of civil courts to regulate matters of religion in general, Brown v. Clark, 116 S.W. 360, 363 (Tex. 1909), and of church discipline in particular, Minton v. Leavell, 297 S.W. 615, 621-22 (Tex. Civ. App.—Galveston 1927, writ ref’d). The Minton court cogently explained why courts must decline jurisdiction over disputes concerning church membership:
It seems to be settled law in this land of religious liberty that the civil courts have no power or jurisdiction to determine the regularity or validity of the judgment of a church tribunal expelling a member from further communion and fellowship in the church. Membership in a church creates a different relationship from that which exists in other voluntary societies formed for business, social, literary, or charitable purposes.
Church relationship stands upon a different and higher plane, and the right of a church to decide for itself whom it may admit into fellowship or who shall be expelled or excluded from its fold cannot be questioned by the courts, when no civil or property rights are involved.
. . . If the courts assume jurisdiction to question the validity of a judgment of a church court upon a question of this character, the churches would be deprived of the right of construing and administering their church laws . . . .
Minton,
297 S.W. at 621-22; see also Brown, 116 S.W. at 363 (“[W]henever the questions of discipline or of faith or
ecclesiastical rule, custom or law have been decided by the highest of these
church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals
must accept as final, and as binding on them in their application to the case
before them.”) (quoting Watson, 80
More recently, in Williams v.
Gleason, the court of appeals declined jurisdiction over parishioners’ tort
claims against church members who participated in the church disciplinary
process, finding that “each claim implicates an ecclesiastical matter, namely
their subjection to the church’s discipline.” 26 S.W.3d 54, 59 (Tex. App.—
D. The Neutral-Principles Exception
The Supreme Court has recognized an
exception to the doctrine of church autonomy when neutral principles of law may
be applied to resolve disputes over ownership of church property. These
exceptions, though, have been narrowly drawn for reasons aptly expressed by the
Supreme Court in Watson over a century ago, and more recently in Milivojevich, 426 U.S. at 709, and Jones v. Wolf,
443 U.S. 595, 603-05 (1979). If civil courts undertake to resolve essentially
religious controversies, “‘the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free
development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in
matters of purely ecclesiastical concern . . . .’” Milivojevich,
426
Milivojevich
involved an intra-church dispute over control of the property and assets of the
Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the
The Supreme Court again addressed an
intra-church dispute over property ownership in Jones, 443
Penley
urges us to apply the neutral-principles approach to her professional-negligence
claim, contending her claim can be resolved under neutral tort principles
without resorting to or infringing upon religious doctrine. But even if we were
to expand the neutral-principles approach beyond the property-ownership context
as Penley requests, we disagree that free-exercise
concerns would not be implicated. A church’s decision to discipline members for
conduct considered outside of the church’s moral code is an inherently
religious function with which civil courts should not generally interfere. See
Watson, 80
Penley contends the primary focus of her complaint is not the letter disseminated to the congregation or CrossLand’s disciplinary process, even though the damages she seeks clearly appear to have arisen from those events. Rather, Penley explains, her suit centers on Westbrook’s initial disclosure to the church elders of confidential information obtained during the marital counseling sessions, which she claims constituted a breach of professional counseling standards. Because “her primary focus is on Westbrook’s disclosure of her confidential information to others separate and apart from the publication of the November 7 letter,” Penley contends her claims “do not involve matters of religious doctrine, practice, or church governance.”
It is true that Penley pins Westbrook’s liability in this case, at least in part, on his breach of a secular duty by disclosing Penley’s confidential information to the church elders in the first instance. However, this disclosure cannot be isolated from the church-disciplinary process in which it occurred, nor can Westbrook’s free-exercise challenge be answered without examining what effect the imposition of damages would have on the inherently religious function of church discipline. Subjecting CrossLand’s pastor to tort liability for engaging in the disciplinary process that the church requires would clearly have a “chilling effect” on churches’ ability to discipline members, Williams, 26 S.W.3d at 59, and deprive churches of their right to construe and administer church laws, Minton, 297 S.W. at 622. See Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc’y of N.Y., Inc., 819 F.2d 875, 881 (9th Cir. 1987) (noting that imposing tort liability for shunning on a church would “in the long run have the same effect as prohibiting the practice and would compel the Church to abandon part of its religious teachings”). In sum, while the elements of Penley’s professional-negligence claim can be defined by neutral principles without regard to religion, the application of those principles to impose civil tort liability on Westbrook would impinge upon CrossLand’s ability to manage its internal affairs and hinder adherence to the church disciplinary process that its constitution requires. See Idleman, 75 Ind. L.J. at 254 n.96.
E. Discrimination and the Ministerial Exception
Cases involving claims of employment discrimination in church-minister relations are closely analogous, where the government’s interest in eradicating discrimination collides with the church’s constitutional right to manage its internal affairs free from government interference. See, e.g., EEOC v. Catholic Univ. of Am., 83 F.3d at 460. In these circumstances, courts have generally held that jurisdiction over a minister’s Title VII claims of sex- and race-based discrimination must yield to First Amendment concerns when necessary to preserve the church’s autonomy to manage its internal affairs.
In Catholic University of America,
for example, Sister Elizabeth McConough, a nun in the
Dominican Order, alleged that the university had engaged in sex discrimination
and retaliatory conduct in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 when it denied her tenure in its Department of Canon Law.
In Combs v. Central Texas
Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, Reverend Combs appealed
the dismissal of her Title VII sex- and pregnancy-discrimination suit against
the church. 173 F.3d 343 (5th Cir. 1999). The sole issue before the Fifth
Circuit was whether the district court correctly determined that the First
Amendment precluded it from considering Combs’s
employment-discrimination case, even when the church’s challenged actions were
not based on religious doctrine.
F. Penley’s Professional-Negligence Claim
We conclude that the secular confidentiality interest Penley’s professional-negligence claim advances fails to override the strong constitutional presumption that favors preserving the church’s interest in managing its affairs. Penley voluntarily became a member of the church body and agreed to abide by the church constitution; indeed, she expressed that she did so “willingly.” That constitution outlined the disciplinary process that would be followed if a member engaged in conduct that the church considered inappropriate. As CrossLand’s and Penley’s pastor, Westbrook assumed an obligation to Penley and to the congregation to follow the church’s constitution. Although Penley contends pastoral counseling is not at issue because she did not receive marital counseling from Westbrook in his capacity as a member of the clergy, the publication about which Penley complains was made in the course of the church disciplinary process and communicated by Westbrook pursuant to the requirements of that process. And even though Penley’s suit is now against Westbrook and no longer the church, it is well-settled that “[t]he interaction between the church and its pastor is an integral part of church government,” Simpson, 494 F.2d at 493 , and “[t]he relationship between an organized church and its ministers is its lifeblood.” McClure, 460 F.2d at 558.
Even if Westbrook’s dual roles as Penley’s secular counselor and her pastor could be
distinguished, which is doubtful, Westbrook could not adhere to the standards
of one without violating the requirements of the other. Any civil liability
that might attach for Westbrook’s violation of a secular duty of
confidentiality in this context would in effect impose a fine for his decision
to follow the religious disciplinary procedures that his role as pastor
required and have a concomitant chilling effect on churches’ autonomy to manage
their own affairs. See, e.g., Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc’y ., 819 F.2d at 881 (stating “the burden of tort
damages is direct . . . [w]ere we to permit recovery, ‘the pressure to . . .
forego that practice [would be] unmistakeable’”)
(quoting Thomas v. Review Bd., 450
We do not doubt that preserving
client confidences revealed in the context of a professional counseling
relationship serves an important public interest, as the duty the Legislature
has imposed on such professionals reflects. See 22 Tex. Admin. Code § 681.41(x).
Maintaining patient confidentiality ensures that individuals receive effective
and competent counseling when they need it. See Abrams v. Jones, 35
S.W.3d 620, 626 (
Penley,
citing Casa View Baptist Church, 134 F.3d 331, contends members of the
clergy enjoy no constitutional protection for misconduct as professional
marriage counselors simply because they may occasionally discuss scripture
within the context of that relationship. In principle, we agree. See Tilton,
925 S.W.2d at 677. But Sanders involved an intentional tort that formed
no part of the pastor’s or his church’s religious beliefs or practices. 134
F.3d at 336-37. In that case, Robyn Sanders and Lisa Mullanix
sued Shelby Baucum, a minister at
In Destefano
v. Grabrian, the Supreme Court of Colorado was
similarly presented with conduct that occurred in the context of a counseling
relationship between a member of the clergy and a congregant. 763 P.2d at 278.
Robert and Edna Destefano sought marriage counseling
from Grabrian, a Catholic priest for their diocese.
In the present case, Penley does not question that Westbrook’s decision to reveal what she considered confidential information to the church elders was mandated by church doctrine and motivated by Westbrook’s religious beliefs. Neither was his revelation an intentional tort that endangered Penley’s or the public’s health or safety. See Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc’y, 819 F.2d at 883 (stating the “intangible or emotional harms” that plaintiff suffered as a result of her shunning “are clearly not of the type that would justify the imposition of tort liability for religious conduct. No physical assault or battery occurred”). Accordingly, Penley’s claims are distinguishable from those asserted in Sanders and other cases that involve sexual assault of parishioners occurring in the context of what purports to be pastoral counseling. See also Strock v. Pressnell, 527 N.E.2d 1235, 1238 (Ohio 1988) (plaintiff alleged his minister engaged in sexual relations with his wife in the course of providing the couple with marriage counseling); F.G. v. Macdonell, 696 A.2d 697, 699 (N.J. 1997) (parishioner sued for breach of fiduciary duty arising out of sexual contact in a pastoral-counseling relationship with her rector).
Penley’s
petition implies that her resignation from the church after she revealed
confidences to Westbrook precludes any argument that Westbrook was performing a
pastoral function in disseminating confidential information to the church. But
clearly Westbrook’s actions were grounded in religious doctrine. Westbrook’s
report to the church elders was an integral part of the church’s three-step
disciplinary process as described in CrossLand’s
letter to the congregation: “If the one in sin ‘refuses to listen’ . . . then
the instructions are to ‘tell it to the church.’” The letter itself was
disseminated to the congregation as the final step in the process: “Through
their continuing sin, they forfeit their membership in the church, and the
members of the church are to break fellowship with them.” Penley’s
voluntary forfeiture of her membership did not, in CrossLand’s
or Westbrook’s view, forestall the church’s duty under its constitution to
“tell it to the church” and admonish church members to “break fellowship with [Penley].” Their decision to so proceed was based on their
interpretation of Matthew 18:15-20, an inherently ecclesiastical matter.
We hold that court interference with that decision through imposition of tort
liability in this case would impinge upon matters of church governance in
violation of the First Amendment. See Milivojevich,
426
G. Penley’s Pleadings
Westbrook’s plea to the jurisdiction
challenges Penley’s pleadings and not the existence
of jurisdictional facts. Accordingly, we construe those pleadings in Penley’s favor, taking as true the facts pled to determine
whether subject-matter jurisdiction exists in this case. See Miranda,
133 S.W.3d at 226. If the pleadings affirmatively negate the existence of
jurisdiction, a plea to the jurisdiction must be granted and repleading is not allowed.
* * *
Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and dismiss the case for want of subject-matter jurisdiction.
___________________________________
Harriet O’Neill
Justice
OPINION DELIVERED: June 29, 2007
[1] Matthew 18 states:
If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
The Holy Bible, Matthew 18:15-17 (New American Standard Bible).
[2] The National Association of Evangelicals, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dallas Theological Seminary submitted amicus curiae briefs in support of Westbrook’s petition.
[3]
Most courts agree that the general prohibition on the adjudication of religious
questions, once triggered, precludes further adjudication of the issue in
question. Scott C. Idleman, Tort Liability,
Religious Entities, and the Decline of Constitutional Protection, 75 Ind. L.J. 219, 225 (2000). However,
there is some disagreement as to the prohibition’s precise legal operation.
[4] See
Destefano v. Grabrian,
763 P.2d 275, 285 n.10 (Colo. 1988) (“‘Family counseling and psychological
counseling are two notable areas in which there is substantial overlap between
the secular and religious aspects of a spiritual counselor’s activities.’”)
(quoting Note, Clergy Malpractice: Taking Spiritual Counseling Conflicts
Beyond Intentional Tort Analysis, 19
[5]
Although Watson was decided before application of the Fourteenth
Amendment to state action and thus turned on general federal law, it
nevertheless delineated the limited role civil courts may constitutionally play
in resolving controversies that touch upon religion. See Serbian E. Orthodox
Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426
[6] Courts have grounded the doctrine of church autonomy in different aspects of the First Amendment, some looking to the Free Exercise Clause, some to the Establishment Clause, some to both, and others to neither in particular. See Idleman, 75 Ind. L.J. at 223-25; see also Bollard v. Cal. Province of the Soc’y of Jesus, 211 F.3d 1331, 1332 (9th Cir. 2000), denying reh’g en banc (Wardlaw, J., dissenting) (“Though the concept originated through application of the Free Exercise Clause, the Supreme Court has held that the Establishment Clause also protects church autonomy in internal religious matters.”); see generally Douglas Laycock, Towards a General Theory of the Religion Clauses: The Case of Church Labor Relations and the Right to Church Autonomy, 81 Colum. L. Rev. 1373 (1981) (positing that Free Exercise Clause protections against burdens or restrictions on religion more appropriately address church autonomy concerns than the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government sponsorship of religion). Because this case does not raise the question of government-sponsored religion, we ground our analysis in the Free Exercise Clause.
[7] See also Drevlow v. Lutheran Church, Mo. Synod, 991 F.2d 468, 470-71 (8th Cir. 1993) (holding minister’s claim that the Synod violated its bylaws by removing his name from list of eligible ministers not justiciable by secular courts); Minker v. Baltimore Annual Conference of United Methodist Church, 894 F.2d 1354, 1356-58 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (holding the application of age-discrimination law in the minister’s lawsuit against his church violative of the Free Exercise Clause); Simpson v. Wells Lamont Corp., 494 F.2d 490, 493-95 (5th Cir. 1974) (holding application of Civil Rights Act to pastor’s claim of racial discrimination would encroach upon the church’s right to be free from secular interference and to decide for themselves matters of church government); McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553, 560-61 (5th Cir. 1972) (holding application of Title VII to the employment relationship between the Salvation Army and its ordained minister would involve a review that would cause improper state intrusion on matters of church governance); cf. Scotts African Union Methodist Protestant Church v. Conference of African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church, 98 F.3d 78, 94-96 (3rd Cir. 1996) (applying neutral-principles approach because aspects of the ownership determination that might touch on the church-governance sphere were irrelevant to the ultimate ownership question); Church of God in Christ, Inc. v. Graham, 54 F.3d 522525-26 (8th Cir. 1995) (applying neutral legal principles to the property dispute because ecclesiastical affairs were not implicated); Sanders v. Casa View Baptist Church, 134 F.3d 331, 336 (5th Cir. 1998), (acknowledging that protecting relationships not purely secular in nature might foster development of important spiritual ties, but holding “the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom cannot be construed to protect secular beliefs and behavior, even when they comprise part of an otherwise religious relationship between a minister and a member of his or her congregation.”).