Opinion ID: 1257960
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: when parishioner withdrew her membership from the church of christ and thereby withdrew her consent to participate in a spiritual relationship in which she had implicitly agreed to submit to ecclesiastical supervision, those disciplinary actions thereafter taken by the elders against parishioner, which actively involved her in the church's will and command, were outside the purview of the first amendment protection and were the proper subject of state regulation. [44]

Text: Parishioner claims that the Elders invaded her privacy when they wrongfully publicized private facts about her life [45] and that this invasion caused her severe emotional stress. After she wrote a letter to the Elders unequivocally withdrawing her membership from the Church of Christ, the Elders continued their disciplinary actions against her. During Sunday services the Elders read to the congregation those scriptures which Parishioner had violated. This exposure of her private life, done without her consent, was unprotected by the First Amendment; the Elders' conduct became hence amenable to state regulation through the imposition of tort liability. Conduct conforming to and motivated by one's religious beliefs is not always immune from governmental regulation: [A] determination of what is a religious belief or practice entitled to constitutional protection may present a most delicate question, [but] the very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests.  [46] [Emphasis added.] Disciplinary practices involving members of an ecclesiastical association, which do not pose a substantial threat to public safety, peace or order, are unquestionably among those hallowed First Amendment rights with which the government cannot interfere. If these sectarian matters were easily subject to civil adjudication and liability by secular judicature, the First Amendment shield under which many types of life, character, opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed [47] would be rendered impotent. First Amendment protection does not extend to all religiously-motivated disciplinary practices in which ecclesiastical organizations might engage. [48] By its very nature, ecclesiastical discipline involves both church and member. It is a means of religious expression as well as a means of ecclesiastically judging one who transgresses a church law which one has consented to obey. The right to express dissatisfaction with the disobedience of those who have promised to adhere to doctrinal precepts and to take ecclesiastically-mandated measures to bring wayward members back within the bounds of accepted behavior, are forms of religious expression and association which the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause was designed to protect and preserve. And yet the constitutionally protected freedom to impose even the most deeply felt, spiritually-inspired disciplinary measure is forfeited when the object of benevolent concern is one who has terminated voluntary submission to another's supervision and command. [49] While the First Amendment requires that citizens be tolerant of religious views different from and offensive to their own, [50] it surely does not require that those like Parishioner, who choose not to submit to the authority of any religious association, be tolerant of that group's attempts to govern them. Only those who unite themselves in a religious association impliedly consent to its authority over them and are bound to submit to it. [51] Parishioner voluntarily joined the Church of Christ and by so doing consented to submit to its tenets. When she later removed herself from membership, Parishioner withdrew her consent, depriving the Church of the power actively to monitor her spiritual life through overt disciplinary acts. No real freedom to choose religion [52] would exist in this land if under the shield of the First Amendment religious institutions could impose their will on the unwilling and claim immunity from secular judicature for their tortious acts. A federal appellate court has held that the Jehovah's Witness Church's practice of shunning, whether directed at current or former transgressing members, is protected First Amendment activity which does not constitute a sufficient threat to the peace, safety, or morality of the community as to warrant state intervention. [53] In Paul a Jehovah's Witness believer became disillusioned with the church, withdrew her membership and subsequently moved to another state. When she visited her old neighborhood a few years later, her Jehovah's Witness friends would not speak to her; the church had instructed them to shun all withdrawn members. Ms. Paul sued the Church, claiming that by shunning her, it had defamed her, caused her severe emotional distress and invaded her privacy. Stating that while a court could, in theory, examine the question whether the shunning of a former member of a church is, in itself, tortious, the court instead follow[ed] the practice of Washington courts which safeguard the free exercise of religion through recognition of substantive defenses to torts, rather than by negating the plaintiff's cause of action itself. [54] The court reasoned that [c]hurches are afforded great latitude when they impose discipline on members or former members. [55] It found that shunning is a form of religious expression which the Free Exercise Clause protects. The Witnesses' practice of shunning is privileged religious conduct, entitled to absolute First Amendment protection from governmental interference. The court held that because the protected practice of shunning did not present a threat to the peace, safety, or morality of the community, [56] state intervention in the form of tort liability was not justified. The facts here, which involve the Elders' postwithdrawal conduct, are clearly distinguishable from those in Paul. While both cases address the tort implications of a church's decision to impose disciplinary measures upon a former member, the form of discipline is notably different in each case. At bar, the Elders, in conformity to their interpretation of biblical mandate, informed four other area Church of Christ congregations within Parishioner's community of her sinful acts. After she had withdrawn her membership from the Church and repeatedly requested the Elders to refrain from exposing her private life to the congregations, they proceeded to share her transgressions with a significant number of her fellow citizens. Although Parishioner had withdrawn her consent to submit to the Church of Christ's prohibition of fornication, the Elders continued actively to discipline and punish her for past disobedience of its doctrinal precepts. In Paul a former member deliberately rejected the faith and beliefs of the Jehovah's Witness Church and was thus shunned. The Elders admonished the members of the church not to speak to Ms. Paul, and they obeyed. While Ms. Paul had withdrawn her membership and thus her consent to submit to the authority of the Jehovah's Witness Church, the act of discipline which it carried out against her was  unlike that in the instant case  a form of rejection and exclusion which did not call for her consent: The members of the Church Paul decided to abandon have concluded that they no longer want to associate with her. We hold that they are free to make that choice. [57] The Elders' postresignation conduct in Paul was passive. Their disassociation from Ms. Paul through shunning was merely a reiteration of her prior rejection, not an active attempt to involve her in the religious practices of a church whose precepts she no longer followed. The church's decision to turn away from her was protected under the First Amendment as a passive exercise of religious freedom, the legitimacy of which was not grounded in her prior acquiescence. For purposes of First Amendment protection, religiously-motivated disciplinary measures that merely exclude a person from communion are vastly different from those which are designed to control and involve. A church clearly is constitutionally free to exclude people without first obtaining their consent. But the First Amendment will not shield a church from civil liability for imposing its will, as manifested through a disciplinary scheme, upon an individual who has not consented to undergo ecclesiastical discipline. The court in Paul stated that [c]ourts generally do not scrutinize closely the relationship among members ( or former members ) ..., and that [c]hurches are afforded great latitude when they impose discipline on members or former members, [58] [emphasis added] but it provided no support for this view. Regardless of our disagreement with the court's refusal in Paul to distinguish between former and present church members when assessing a church's freedom to visit religious discipline, it is apparent that the stated rationale did not form the basis of the court's holding. We believe that the conclusion reached in Paul and our holding today are entirely consistent and easily reconcilable. In order to prevail on her claim for invasion of privacy by publication of private facts, Parishioner had to prove the four elements of that tort. She had the burden of showing that the Elders' statements (1) were highly offensive to a reasonable person, (2) contained private facts about Parishioner's life, (3) were a public disclosure of private facts and (4) were not of legitimate concern to the Church of Christ congregation. The Elders contend that elements three and four were not met. In Eddy v. Brown this court recently stated that Okalahoma applies the Restatement (Second) of Torts when assessing whether a statement made to a group of people constitutes publicity. [59] In Eddy a statement to a limited number of Eddy's coworkers that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment did not amount to publication for purposes of invasion of privacy. The case at bar presents a different factual scenario. Here, the Elders read scriptures that implicated Parishioner's private life to a church congregation comprising five percent of Parishioner's hometown population. This group of people constitutes, in many respects, Parishioner's public. Parishioner proved element number three by showing that the Elders' actions amounted to a publication. The Elders' contentions are hence without merit. To satisfy element number four of invasion of privacy by publication of private facts, Parishioner had to prove that the publication was not of legitimate concern to the congregation. In McCormack v. Oklahoma Pub. Co ., [60] our first case to adopt publication of private facts as a means of invading another's privacy, McCormack claimed that Oklahoma Publishing Company [OPUBCO] invaded his privacy by publicizing an article that discussed his past involvement in an illegal gambling operation. Deciding in favor of OPUBCO, this court stated that the publication was not proven to be unreasonable. McCormack did not allege facts sufficient to show either that OPUBCO's statements were not already of public record or that they were not of legitimate concern to the public. In Eddy this court refined the elements required to prove invasion of privacy by publication of private facts. Eddy articulated those elements as (1) publicity, (2) which is unreasonable and (3) which is given as a private fact. Because the statements made to Eddy's coworkers did not constitute a publication, this court was not required to decide whether these statements were unreasonable and thus not of legitimate concern to the public. According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, the legitimate public concern requirement is based on the policy that the public has a proper interest in learning about such matters. [61] To constitute an invasion of privacy, a publication must be highly offensive to a reasonable person and of no legitimate concern to the public. The Elders' testimony indicates that one of the purposes served by withdrawal-of-fellowship proceedings is to keep the [accused member's] sin from spreading throughout the entire congregation. In order to protect the Collinsville Church and other area Churches of Christ from Parishioner's adverse influence, those congregations were made aware of the transgressions she admitted to having committed. In Redgate v. Roush [62] the court dealt with a Church of Christ member, sometimes acting as pastor, who sued the elders of the Wilmington Church of Christ for defamation. Because he preached sermons which contravened the church doctrine, the elders of that church withdrew fellowship from him and circulated articles in the church paper which warned of his unworthiness as a Church of Christ member and pastor. As in the case at bar, the Elders in Redgate defended their decision to publish the article denouncing Redgate as void of the spirit of Christ on the grounds that the information legitimately concerned the congregations. The court held the Elders had a qualified privilege to communicate the reasons for the disciplinary withdrawal-of-fellowship proceedings which they initiated against Redgate. [63] While Redgate involved a congregation's concerns with the credentials of a person who might have attempted to continue preaching within the affected denomination, the case at bar involves a congregation's concern with the sins of a person who is no longer a church member. In Redgate the congregation had a legitimate and reasonable concern for the transgressor's actions; in the case at bar it did not. In Redgate the congregation had a common interest in being informed about the questionable conduct of one among them who expressed the desire to continue ministering to them or to one of their neighboring assemblies. Here, Parishioner expressed no interest in continuing her association with the Collinsville or any other Church of Christ. She removed herself from membership and thus posed no threat of continued adverse influence on any Church of Christ congregation. Because the disciplinary actions taken by the Elders after Parishioner's resignation are not deserving of First Amendment protection, they were the proper subject of her claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. This delict, also known as the tort of outrage, is recognized in Oklahoma and is governed by the parameters expressed in Eddy v. Brown . [64] According to Eddy, the extreme and outrageous nature of the parties' conduct should not be considered in a vacuum. [65] The outrageousness of the Elders' post-withdrawal conduct was properly scrutinized in accordance with the Eddy test. The Elders knew that Parishioner had withdrawn from the Church and yet they continued to discipline her as though she were a current and active member. Among the Collinsville congregation were Parishioner's friends and fellow townspeople. Parishioner expressed her apprehension to the Elders and requested that they not mention her name to the congregation except to announce her withdrawal. In this setting, disciplining Parishioner as if she were still a member by communicating her sin of fornication could be found to be beyond all bounds of decency. We hence hold there is competent evidence to support the jury's conclusion that the Elders had intended to inflict emotional harm on Parishioner. In Paul the court held that the intangible, emotional harms suffered by Paul as a result of her shunning ... [were] clearly not of the type that would justify the imposition of tort liability for religious conduct. [66] It reasoned that [w]ithout society's tolerance of offenses to sensibility, the protection of religious differences mandated by the first amendment would be meaningless. [67] While we agree that First Amendment freedoms could be jeopardized by the imposition of tort liability for every religious act which offends, we are equally certain that some religiously motivated acts are actionable because they fall outside the scope of First Amendment protection and that those acts would indeed be the proper subject of secular judicature. The Elders' postwithdrawal disciplinary measures were imposed without Parishioner's consent and were thus undeserving of First Amendment protection. Imposing tort liability upon the Elders for their unprotected acts does not threaten our constitutionally shielded religious freedoms. We hold that Parishioner, an unwilling, nonconsenting subject of a church's disciplinary actions, has an actionable claim against the Elders and the Church of Christ for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.