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978
F.2d 940
124 Lab.Cas. P 57,170
(Cite
as: 978 F.2d 940)
United
States Court of Appeals,
Sixth
Circuit
Joseph
P. LEWIS; Julia A. Lewis, Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
SEVENTH
DAY ADVENTISTS LAKE REGION CONFERENCE, an Illinois Corporation,
Defendant-Appellee.
No.
92-1085
Argued
Oct. 8, 1992
Decided
Nov. 4, 1992
Minister
and his wife brought action against religious organization,
alleging breach of contract, promissory estoppel, intentional
infliction of emotional distress, and loss of consortium
in connection with termination of minister's employment.
The United States District Court for the Eastern District
of Michigan, Barbara K. Hackett, J., 779 F.Supp. 72, dismissed,
and minister appealed. The Court of Appeals, Ralph B. Guy,
Jr., Circuit Judge, held that First Amendment barred civil
review of decision to discharge minister.
Affirmed.
West
Headnotes
Constitutional
Law k84.5(10)
92k84.5(10)
Religious
Societies k27(3)
332k27(3)
Dismissal
of minister's action against religious organization for
breach of employment contract and related claims was warranted;
First Amendment bars civil courts from reviewing decisions
of religious judicatory bodies relating to employment of
clergy, even where clergymen alleges that religious tribunal's
decision was based upon misapplication of its own procedures
and laws. U.S.C.A. Const.Amend. 1.
*940
William
M. Hatchett (argued and briefed), Hatchett, Dewalt, Hatchett
& Hall, Pontiac, Mich., Melissa Zakiya El, Detroit,
Mich., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Randolph
D. Phifer (argued and briefed), Patterson & Phifer,
Detroit, Mich., for defendant-appellee.
Before:
GUY and BATCHELDER, Circuit Judges; and CELEBREZZE, Senior
Circuit Judge.
RALPH
B. GUY, JR., Circuit Judge.
A
minister brought this diversity action against the defendant
religious organization that terminated his employment. The
district court dismissed the action, holding that the First
Amendment bars a civil court from intervening in an employment
dispute between a church and its clergy. We affirm.
*941
I.
The
Seventh Day Adventist Church, a worldwide ecclesiastical
corporation, is organized into a hierarchical structure.
At the highest level of the hierarchy is the General Conference.
The General Conference is divided into geographic "divisions,"
which in turn are divided into "unions," which are further
divided into "regions." The defendant, the Lake Region Conference
of the Seventh Day Adventist Day Church ("Lake Region"),
is a region based in Illinois. Lake Region governs local
congregations in portions of Michigan and several other
states.
Until
1988, Joseph Lewis was employed by Lake Region as a minister
for several Michigan churches, including Wood Street Church
in Muskegon. By all accounts, Lewis' performance as a minister
was satisfactory.
In
the mid-1980s, disputes arose between Lewis and Lake Region
over Lake Region's handling of church finances and over
Lewis' conduct as the personal representative of an estate
to which both Lewis and Lake Region were devisees. In 1986,
Lake Region's Executive Committee voted to terminate Lewis.
Lewis appealed the decision to Lake Region's governing union,
the Lake Union Conference. After a hearing, the Lake Union
Conference reinstated Lewis with backpay.
In
1988, Lake Region's Executive Committee again terminated
Lewis. Lewis again challenged his termination, but he declined
to appear before a hearing panel convened by Lake Region
because of a dispute over the panel's composition. Lewis
eventually appealed the termination to the Lake Union Conference.
While his appeal was pending, a meeting of Lake Region's
membership (known as "the constituency") was held. The constituency
voted to reinstate Lewis pending the outcome of his appeal.
After Lewis refused to participate in his appeal before
the Lake Union Conference, Lake Region's Executive Committee
terminated his salary.
Lewis
then filed an action for injunctive relief in Wayne County
(Michigan) Circuit Court. The court did not grant Lewis
any relief, but the Lake Union Conference agreed to submit
Lewis' dispute to non-binding arbitration within the union.
After a hearing, the union's arbitration panel recommended
that Lake Region reinstate Lewis and provide him with a
new ministry in the region.
Lake
Region's Executive Committee then appointed a subcommittee
to study the matter. The subcommittee ultimately recommended
that Lewis be reinstated with backpay. However, the Executive
Committee did not implement the subcommittee's recommendations,
and Lewis was not reinstated.
Lewis
has continued to serve as minister of Wood Street Church
without the authorization of Lake Region. The church has
refused to accept the minister sent by Lake Region, has
stopped sending tithes and offerings to Lake Region, and
has paid Lewis' salary out of the withheld monies.
Lewis
and his wife, Julia Lewis, filed this diversity action against
Lake Region in October 1990. The Lewises' complaint contained
claims for breach of contract, promissory estoppel, intentional
infliction of emotional distress, and loss of consortium.
Lake
Region moved to dismiss, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1)
and (6), arguing that the Free Exercise Clause of the First
Amendment precluded the district court from exercising jurisdiction
over the Lewises' claims. The district court agreed and
granted the motion to dismiss. Lewis v. Lake Region Conference
of Seventh Day Adventists, 779 F.Supp. 72 (E.D.Mich.1991).
This appeal followed.
II.
The
First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides,
in part, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof[.]" The Supreme Court has long held that on matters
of church discipline, faith, practice, and religious law,
the Free Exercise Clause requires civil courts to refrain
from interfering with the determinations of the "highest
of these church judicatories to which the *942 matter has
been carried." Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.)
679, 727, 20 L.Ed. 666 (1871).
The
Court most recently reaffirmed that doctrine in Serbian
Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696,
96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976). In Milivojevich,
the Court reversed a state court ruling that had set aside
a church's decision to defrock and remove one of its clergymen.
In reaching that result, the Court rejected the proposition
that the church's alleged failure to follow its own procedures
opened the door for civil court review:
The
conclusion of the Illinois Supreme Court that the decisions
of the Mother Church were "arbitrary" was grounded upon
an inquiry that persuaded the Illinois Supreme Court that
the Mother Church had not followed its own laws and procedures
in arriving at those decisions. We have concluded that whether
or not there is room for "marginal civil court review" under
the narrow rubrics of "fraud" or "collusion" when church
tribunals act in bad faith for secular purposes, no "arbitrariness"
exception--in the sense of an inquiry whether the decisions
of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of a hierarchical
church complied with church laws and regulations--is consistent
with the constitutional mandate that civil courts are bound
to accept the decisions of the highest judicatories of a
religious organization of hierarchical polity on matters
of discipline, faith, internal organization, or ecclesiastical
rule, custom, or law. For civil courts to analyze whether
the ecclesiastical actions of a church judicatory are in
that sense "arbitrary" must inherently entail inquiry into
the procedures that canon or ecclesiastical law supposedly
requires the church judicatory to follow, or else into the
substantive criteria by which they are supposedly to decide
the ecclesiastical question. But this is exactly the inquiry
that the First Amendment prohibits; recognition of such
an exception would undermine the general rule that religious
controversies are not the proper subject of civil court
inquiry, and that a civil court must accept the ecclesiastical
decisions of church tribunals as it finds them.
Milivojevich,
426 U.S. at 712-13, 96 S.Ct. at 2382 (footnote omitted).
In
a case remarkably similar to this one, we affirmed the dismissal
of an action brought by a minister against the church that
allegedly forced him into retirement by misapplying provisions
of church law. Hutchison v. Thomas, 789 F.2d 392 (6th Cir.),
cert. denied, 479 U.S. 885, 107 S.Ct. 277, 93 L.Ed.2d 253
(1986). After reviewing Milivojevich and Watson, we noted
that a minister's employment relationship with his church
implicates "internal church discipline, faith, and organization,
all of which are governed by ecclesiastical rule, custom,
and law." Hutchison, 789 F.2d at 396. We concluded that
civil court jurisdiction over a ministerial employment dispute
was impermissible because such state intervention would
excessively inhibit religious liberty. Id. Our decision
in Hutchison is in accord with several recent cases in which
other circuits have declined to exercise jurisdiction in
employment disputes between churches and their clergy. See
Natal v. Christian and Missionary Alliance, 878 F.2d 1575
(1st Cir.1989); Rayburn v. General Conference of Seventh
Day Adventists, 772 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir.1985), cert. denied,
478 U.S. 1020, 106 S.Ct. 3333, 92 L.Ed.2d 739 (1986); Kaufmann
v. Sheehan, 707 F.2d 355 (8th Cir.1983).
The
Lewises maintain, however, that civil courts sometimes may
intervene in employment disputes between churches and clergy.
They rely heavily on the Ninth Circuit's decision in EEOC
v. Pacific Press Publishing Association, 676 F.2d 1272 (9th
Cir.1982), in which the court exercised jurisdiction over
a case involving the termination of an employee of a religious
publishing house. That reliance is misplaced, however, as
the Pacific Press court carefully distinguished a publishing
employee's role from that of a minister, noting that a church's
relationship with its ministers is its "lifeblood." 676
F.2d at 1278.
We
conclude that the First Amendment bars civil courts from
reviewing decisions of religious judicatory bodies relating
to the employment of clergy. Even when, as here, the plaintiff
alleges that the religious *943 tribunal's decision was
based on a misapplication of its own procedures and laws,
the civil courts may not intervene.
The
Lewises attempt to distinguish Watson and Milivojevich by
arguing that the Lake Region's constituency, not the Executive
Committee, is the "highest of these church judicatories."
Watson, 80 U.S. at 727. Therefore, the Lewises contend,
the civil courts need not defer to the decisions of the
Executive Committee. We reject this argument for two reasons.
First,
the argument is based on a misreading of Watson. In Watson,
the Court demanded deference to the "highest of these church
judicatories to which the matter has been carried." Id.
(emphasis added). Although Lake Region's constituency reinstated
Lewis pending his appeal to the Lake Union Conference, the
constituency did not overturn his ultimate termination.
Thus, the Executive Committee is the highest tribunal to
which the matter has been carried. Second, the Lewises'
argument, if upheld, would require a civil court to conduct
a review of ecclesiastical law to determine which tribunal
is the highest. This is exactly the sort of inquiry that
the First Amendment forbids.
We
find that the district court properly declined to exercise
jurisdiction over the Lewises' complaint. Accordingly, we
affirm the dismissal.
AFFIRMED.
Copr.
© West 2002 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works
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