If a church through its local governing documents and denominational, if any, governing documents requires that disputes between members, especially church leadership, must be resolved pursuant to a particular procedure or process, then courts are likely to hold that defamation claims by the disparaged member or leader are barred by the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine. This may be true even if the disparagement “leaks” out into the community and is not solely confined to the church.

The case of In Re Alief Vietnamese Alliance Church and Phan Phung Hung, Slip Op. (Tex. Civ. App. 1st 2019) was a request by a church for a writ sought from the appellate level to preclude the trial court from proceeding with a defamation lawsuit. The trial court overruled a plea to the jurisdiction. The appellate court ordered the trial court to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds or the appellate court would issue a writ of mandamus ordering the trial court to do so. In Texas, the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine is a bar to exercise of jurisdiction by a court in most instances. However, the facts recited by the appellate court, and that the appellate court was not itself unanimous, demonstrated the factual uncertainty that might have led the trial court to decide it should proceed. The allegations of the disparaged person seemed from the appellate majority opinion more certain regarding internal church disciplinary disparagement but less so with regard to intentional or reckless dispersal beyond the confines of the church. Mere slight “leakage,” my words for brevity and not the court’s, did not seem sufficient to the majority to mutate the internal disparagement inherent in disciplinary matters, true or not and with or without malice, to defamation outside the shield of the First Amendment.

Discipline is inherently disparaging, at least to certain hearers. It is always based on an alleged violation of church procedure, church law, or morality endorsed by the church in some manner. Thus, church leadership should carefully keep such matters confidential even as to members that do not need to be informed. Greater still should be the confidentiality maintained with regard to non-members. The only exception to either should be in those rare instances when a governmental law enforcement agency must be involved, e.g., child abuse, child pornography, child neglect and offenses requiring registration as a sex offender. Even then, a church should engage legal counsel to determine what is safe to report or shield from the public and or the membership. The test is legal; it is no longer based on a belief or lack thereof in “guilt.”

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