This morning, the Third Court of Appeals released an opinion reviewing a Travis County trial court decision to dismiss certain claims against an Oak Hill church for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, based on the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, which in turn stems from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Third Court of Appeals, after presenting a fairly detailed discussion of the doctrine (and, in turn, of the historical relationship between religious and secular decision making in this country), found that the trial court properly dismissed some claims but that some did in fact survive the First Amendment challenge.
Ken Patton was the Director of Youth Ministries for the Oak Hill United Methodist Church in the greater Austin area. His was a strictly lay ministry; that is, he “did not participate in worship services or ceremonies, had no responsibility for the music or liturgy, did not assist with the confirmation of youth, and was not required to teach religious classes or have religious training.” According to the Court, in response to some complaints from members of the congregation, the clergy at the church conducted an investigation which resulted in Patton’s termination. Subsequent to the termination, the church’s leadership wrote an explanatory letter to two members of the church and discussed the situation with several others.
Patton sued the church, alleging tortious interference with his employment contract and defamation, both pursuant to the investigation and subsequent to the investigation. The church filed a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, citing the First Amendment-based doctrine of ecclesiastical abstention.
The First Amendment states, among other things, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free speech thereof.” In 1872, the U.S. Supreme Court explained that this means secular courts are to stay out of purely religious disputes:
civil courts exercise no jurisdiction . . . where a subject-matter of dispute is strictly and purely ecclesiastical in character, [such as disputes] concerning theological controversy, church discipline, ecclesiastical government, or the conformity of the members of the church to the standard of morals required. Instead, civil courts are to accept “as final, and as binding on them” the decisions of an ecclesiastical institution on mush matters. It would be of vain consent if anyone aggrieved by one of an ecclesiastical institution’s 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 amongst themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance. In part, this is because ecclesiastical institutions are the best judges of what constitutes an offense against the word of God and of matters of faith, discipline and doctrine; and civil courts, if they should be so unwise to attempt to decide such matters, would only involve themselves in a sea of uncertainty and doubt.
Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 728-33 (1872) (as selectively quoted by the Third Court of Appeals).
So what does this mean, at least in terms of Texas employment law jurisprudence? It means that a church can make hiring and firing decisions which are protected from review by the secular courts, which have no subject matter jurisdiction to review those decisions, assuming they are ecclesiastical in nature. The doctrine applies not only to the church’s decision to fire clergy; it applies to the hiring or firing of anyone who serves in a ministerial capacity.
In this morning’s opinion, the Third Court of Appeals set forth the test used in Texas to determine if a non-clergy church employee’s work is of a ministerial nature, and in Mr. Patton’s context, the church found that indeed, a youth minister’s work was ministerial. That being the case, any decisions of an ecclesiastical nature with respect to Mr. Patton’s employment were immune from civil court review.
Therefore, according to the Court, the district court properly dismissed Patton’s claims of tortious interference with an employment contract and defamation, at least to the extent that the alleged defamation was related to the termination proceeding. The ecclesiastical abstention doctrine did not apply, however, to Patton’s claims that the church defamed him subsequent to his termination. Since the ecclesiastical decision to terminate had already been made at that point, explains the Court, the allegedly defamatory comments could not have been made in furtherance of that ecclesiastical decisionmaking. Therefore, the civil courts of Travis county retained jurisdiction to hear those claims.
Patton v. Jones, et al., Cause No. 03-04-00389
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