Tag: church employment

STAPLER RULES IN CHURCH LITIGATION

While typically Courts will not honor form over substance, sometimes they do and church lawsuits are not immune from the refusal to view the entire record before the Court on procedural grounds.

In Jane Doe v Coe and First Congregational Church of Dundee, 2017 IL. App. 2d 160875, even though it seemed from the Court’s opinion the Constitution and Bylaws of the denominational entity were in the record, the fact they were not stapled to affidavits relying upon them violated a Court rule requiring it resulting in appellate reversal of the dismissal of the case.  While such a holding would make sense if the identification of the Constitution and Bylaws were uncertain as a result, the Court’s opinion expressed no such reservation.  The issue in the case was whether any of the denominational defendants had the authority to hire or fire a youth pastor at the local church.  The Constitution and Bylaws allegedly either did not authorize that level of denominational control or prohibited it as noted in the affidavits.  Thus, a wrongful hiring or failure to fire claim would not rise above the local church absent authority or actual control.  While some denominations are vertically integrated and hierarchical in employment issues, not all are.  The autonomy of the local church as to employment issues could limit such a claim to the local church.

Stapler rules, requiring a document elsewhere in the court record to be attached to a particular pleading or other document to be considered, seem anachronistic.  Such a rule would only make sense in those remaining states that lag behind in computerization of court records.  Unless identification of the document is reasonably in doubt, if it can be considered at all and is not considered only because it is not stapled to the document considered, seems a huge waste of time and litigation cost both for the litigants and the courts.  Even in a state like Oklahoma that has generally good computer access to civil case records but where the underfunding of the courts results in judges in the trial courts not having staff attorney assistance such a rule would probably not be enforced absent extra-ordinary circumstances.  Nevertheless, church lawyers ever mindful of the resource limitations of their offering funded clients still must anticipate such things and prepare document meticulously.

PASTOR EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS AND THE MINISTERIAL EXCEPTION

One of the interesting questions in church law is whether an employment contract with a pastor overrides the Ministerial Exception.  The Ministerial Exception is the label for the First Amendment doctrine which excludes some church employment issues from governance by secular law or secular courts.  Indeed, the uncertainty in recent years has been to determine the other church jobs that were outside the scope of court and regulatory jurisdiction.  Of course, ministers, priests and pastors were outside the scope.  Employment contracts raise the uncertainty of whether they remain outside the scope in whole or in part.

In Rev. Lee v Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, Slip Op., 2017 WL 3508140 (WD Penn. 2017) the federal court carefully traced the contours of a written employment agreement with a senior pastor to determine whether the employment relationship or parts of it had been carried outside of the Ministerial Exception.  The opinion also contained most of the salient terms of the employment agreement verbatim which might also assist practitioners.  The question the court answered was whether the employment contract terminated the applicability of the Ministerial Exception.  The Court held that the Ministerial Exception had, indeed, been preserved in its applicability to termination of the pastor by the employment contract.  Of course, that reserved for a future case whether some other contract might not.

The language in the employment contract that preserved the Ministerial Exception was a catch all reserve clause that merely stated termination could be “by law” and on “other grounds.”  The employment contract also specified “for cause” termination grounds and the church was claiming that the “for cause” grounds had been triggered.  The church put on evidence of declining attendance and declining finances, both of which the church labeled as “spiritual stewardship” and “financial stewardship” in the employment contract.  The Court held that these grounds for termination were ecclesiastical and triggered the Ministerial Exception because to decide them would lead to “excessive entanglement” in church affairs.  For example, the Court would have to decide whether the cause of declining finances was due to mismanagement or declining giving reflecting a loss of confidence in the pastor either of which could be ecclesiastic.

CHURCH EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS

Generally, an employment contract in writing will be enforced even if one of the contracting parties is a church or para-church organization. “A church is always free to burden its activities voluntarily through contracts, and such contracts are fully enforceable in civil court.” Mis v Fairfield College Preparatory School, Slip. Op., 2017 WL 3174422 (Sup. Conn. 2017) (unpublished) (quoting).

The Mis opinion was a trial court order overruling a Motion to Dismiss. Thus, the case continued and the opinion was not the final word. Also, in Connecticut, like most states, obtaining a dismissal is difficult because the factual record has not been developed through any discovery and the Court has only the Plaintiff’s pleading before it which must generally be treated as true regardless of whether it is true unless it is implausible.

In Mis, the Plaintiff was a tenured teacher. The school employment handbook contained a morals clause. For tenured faculty, it also contained a right to a hearing on involuntary termination. The Plaintiff during a school fundraiser was alleged by a church leader to have engaged in immoral conduct, the nature of which was not specified in the Court’s opinion. Upon termination, the teacher demanded the hearing accorded in the handbook. The hearing was conducted and the teacher was exonerated. But, the church terminated the Plaintiff. The opinion of the Court does not explain the reason the church disregarded or overruled the hearing finding, but the Plaintiff sued for breach of contract. The Plaintiff alleged the handbook constituted an employment contract.

One lesson of this opinion might be that a church school should not provide a right to a hearing if the church school does not want to be bound by the outcome of the hearing. Also, the whole concept of “tenure” generally acts to create a contract that has to be limited by specific language in the handbook or contract that would fit tenure to the church school circumstance.

CHURCH SCHOOL MINISTERS

The Ministerial Exception when applicable bars enforcement of most state and federal employment laws against church employers and bars employment claims by most church employees. Church employees are almost always engaged in religious duties in parallel with non-religious duties. Para-church organizations, however, by their hybrid nature force the Courts to inquire more deeply and with some skepticism because the further from the actual church the organization is the murkier the application of the exception probably will be. A church school is a para-church organization if it is a separate corporate or legal entity which for financial and accounting reasons most are.

In Fratello v Archdiocese of New York, 863 F3d 190 (2nd Cir., 2017), the federal appellate court had to decide whether a “lay principal” of a church high school was a “minister” triggering the exception. The Plaintiff’s contract was not renewed for a fifth year as “lay principal.” The Court opinion did not specify the reason for non-renewal. The Plaintiff’s employment contract listed Plaintiff’s job title as “Lay Principal.” But, the courts looked at the actual duties described and performed. Religious instruction by the employee of the students was the primary factor. No formal ordination was required. The Court found that the “lay principal” was delegated religious duties by the local church pastor responsible for the school to the archdiocese. Finding the employee responsible for religious instruction of students triggered the exception and the case was dismissed which the appellate court affirmed.

One lesson from this opinion was that the Court explicitly stated there was no presumption that the principal of a church school was a minister triggering the exception. Counsel with such a case for a church school must convince the church school or its sponsor to search out the record of religious entanglements with the job of the former employee. For example, in Fratello, affidavits or written statements by other school personnel confirmed the Plaintiff’s involvement in religious instruction from the school intercom broadcast of a prayer or other religious message to the actual supervision of religious instruction teachers and classes. There was likely little or no written record of the former and maybe not of the latter.