Opinion ID: 391211
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: CONSTRUCTION OF TITLE VII: McCLURE

Text: 18 The Seminary argues that Congress did not intend Title VII to apply to the employment relationship between a church and its ministers, citing McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553 (5th Cir. 1972), and that McClure's holding applies to this case. Mrs. McClure brought suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming that the Salvation Army discriminated against her on account of her gender. The legal boundaries of this court's decision in McClure are apparent from the opening paragraphs: The Salvation Army is a church and Mrs. Billie B. McClure is one of its ordained ministers .... Restricting our decision to the church-minister relationship and expressly refraining from any decision as to other church employees of a type not involved in this controversy, we affirm the judgment rendered below. Id. at 554-555. To reach this result, the court found that the Salvation Army was an employer engaged in an 'industry affecting commerce,'  within the meaning of § 701(b), (f), and (h) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b), (f), (h), but that the exemption found in § 702, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1, did not apply. McClure, 460 F.2d at 556-58. In addressing the constitutional issues presented, the court found that a serious doubt of constitutionality was raised and concluded that Congress did not intend to regulate the employment relationship between church and ministers. Id. at 558-561. The Supreme Court in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 59 L.Ed.2d 533 (1979), used the same approach to statutory construction as this court did in McClure. In Mississippi College we determined that the College could not rely on McClure's ultimate holding, because the College was not a church, and its faculty and staff were not ministers. Mississippi College, 626 F.2d at 485. 19 The Seminary asserts its situation is factually distinct from the Mississippi College case because it is a church and its faculty and staff are ministers. While the Seminary does not contest that it meets the initial criteria for application of the statute, it argues that section 702 of Title VII exempts it from filing these forms. In this regard, the Seminary asks us to reconsider McClure's holding that section 702 does not exempt religious organizations from liability for discrimination based on race, color, sex, or natural origin. The Seminary urges that Catholic Bishop requires a modification of McClure. However, after both the announcement of Catholic Bishop and the filing of the Seminary's brief, this court has reaffirmed McClure's validity. E.E.O.C. v. Mississippi College, 626 F.2d 477 (5th Cir. 1980). Thus, this holding of McClure may not be reexamined by this panel. Nevertheless, we still must compare the facts of McClure to those in this case to ensure that the constitutional considerations that mandated the McClure holding are equally efficacious here. 20 McClure's reasoning is grounded in a line of Supreme Court cases dealing with intra-church disputes. After discussing the wall of separation that exists between religion and the state, citing Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. 504, 91 L.Ed. 711 (1947), and the need for a compelling interest to justify even an incidental burden, citing Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963), the court turned to those cases dealing with judicial consideration of matters of purely ecclesiastical concern. Finding that the relationship between an organized church and its ministers is its lifeblood, the court held that the maintenance of a private Title VII suit by one such minister against the church would violate the principles embodied in the line of cases from Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. 679, 80 U.S. 679, 20 L.Ed.666 (1871), through Presbyterian Church in United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969). McClure, 460 F.2d at 558-60. Similarly, those principles would be violated by the EEOC's demand to reveal the details of the employment relationship between a church and its ministers. 21 While we agree with EEOC that the burden of filing the EEO-6 form is less than the burden of defending a lawsuit, its interest in acquiring information about such relationships is greatly attenuated. The EEOC has denied in this case that it is seeking to enforce any substantive provision of Title VII. It says it is simply gathering information in case Congress wants it. Congress' need for information in an area it cannot constitutionally regulate is not a compelling interest, and the EEOC does not argue that it is. The rationale of McClure is fully applicable here. 22
23 We come now to the crux of this case: the proper characterization of the Seminary. The EEOC describes the Seminary as a religiously affiliated institution. The Seminary claims it is wholly religious. 24 Since we have already distinguished Mississippi College on this issue, see Part II, supra, we turn to McClure. Our task in discerning the nature of the Seminary and the role of its employees is more difficult than that the court faced in McClure. There, all parties agreed that the Salvation Army was a religion and McClure was a minister, id. at 556. Clearly, the Seminary is an integral part of a church, essential to the paramount function of training ministers who will continue the faith. It is not intended to foster social or secular programs that may entertain the faithful or evangelize the unbelieving. Its purpose is to indoctrinate those who already believe, who have received a divine call, and who have expressed an intent to enter full-time ministry. The local congregation that regularly meets in a house of worship is not the only entity covered by our use of the word church. That much is clear from McClure. In the Baptist denomination, the Convention is formed to serve all participating local congregations. The fact that those who choose to participate in the Convention do so voluntarily renders it no less deserving of the protection of McClure. Since the Seminary is principally supported and wholly controlled by the Convention for the avowed purpose of training ministers to serve the Baptist denomination, it too is entitled to the status of church. 25
26 This is a more difficult question. The parties have identified three categories of Seminary employees: faculty, administrative staff, and support staff. The district court concluded that the first two groups should be considered ministers, while the latter group were not ministers in the formal sense. To the extent that these findings indicate determinations of fact by the district court, they must be accepted unless clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52. The status of these employees as ministers for purposes of McClure remains a legal conclusion subject to plenary review. The Seminary urges that all its employees serve a ministerial function. While religious organizations may designate persons as ministers for their religious purposes free from any governmental interference, bestowal of such a designation does not control their extra-religious legal status. 27 The district court found that the Seminary makes employment decisions regarding faculty members largely on religious criteria. This finding is supported by the record. As previously discussed, the level of personal religious commitment of faculty members is considered more important than their devotion to the Baptist church or their academic abilities, though all of these qualities are desirable. According to Dr. Dilday, President of the Seminary, there is no course taught at the Seminary that has a strictly secular purpose; Dr. Naylor, the Seminary's President Emeritus, testified similarly. Though the record indicates that ministers are ordained by local churches and not by the Seminary, most of the faculty have been ordained. The Seminary expects the faculty to teach by example as well as by other means. 3 The faculty models the ministerial role for the students. Based on the district court's findings of fact, we conclude that the faculty at the Seminary fit the definition of ministers for the purpose of applying McClure. 28 The facts in Mississippi College were not the same. There, we explained: 29 The faculty members are not intermediaries between a church and its congregation. They neither attend to the religious needs of the faithful nor instruct students in the whole of religious doctrine. That faculty members are expected to serve as exemplars of practicing Christians does not serve to make the terms and conditions of their employment matters of church administration and thus purely of ecclesiastical concern. 30 Id. at 485. In this case, the faculty are intermediaries between the Convention and the future ministers of many local Baptist churches. They do instruct the seminarians in the whole of religious doctrine, and only religiously oriented courses are taught. 4 Thus, the role of the faculty of the Seminary is different from that of Mississippi College's faculty. Candor compels acknowledgment, moreover, that we can only dimly perceive the lines of demarcation in this extraordinarily sensitive area of constitutional law. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745, 755 (1971). The line, though dimly perceived, is there. McClure establishes that Title VII does not apply to the employment relationship between this Seminary and its faculty. Given the unique role of the faculty of any school, they are afforded unique protection. See N.L.R.B. v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 500-502, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 1319, 59 L.Ed.2d 533, 541-42 (1979). 31 The support staff consists of approximately twenty-two full-time personnel and several hundred part-time personnel who perform a variety of non-academic functions. The part-time workers are almost exclusively students, spouses of students, or spouses of faculty. At least four of the full-time workers have been ordained in the Baptist denomination. By their own testimony, their calling is service in the maintenance department of the Seminary. Thus, we must determine whether under McClure, though one need not be ordained to be a minister as indicated previously, ordination is a sufficient factor to make one a minister. Our analysis is complicated by the fact that Mrs. McClure, though an ordained minister, was functioning principally as a secretary at the time she was discharged. The failure of any party to challenge Mrs. McClure's status as a minister engaged in the religious or ecclesiastical activities of the church relieved this court from clearly explicating the test for such a determination in that case. See id. at 556. Moreover, Mrs. McClure's status as an ordained minister, a commissioned officer in the Salvation Army, was neither incidental to nor depreciated by her service as a secretary. According to the district court's fact findings in McClure, commissioned officers may be assigned field duty, similar to a local pastorate, or staff duty, consisting of various assignments in one of the Army's regional headquarters. McClure v. Salvation Army, 323 F.Supp. 1100, 1101-02 (N.D.Ga.1971). Mrs. McClure's position as a secretary was the staff duty assigned to her. She was still fully qualified and authorized to perform the ceremonies of the Army, which, the district court found, included swearing in officers, conducting weddings and funerals, and dedicating babies. Id. at 1101, 1104. The role of the support staff at the Seminary is qualitatively different from Mrs. McClure's role in the Salvation Army. 32 The undisputed testimony of the Director of the Physical Plant, Mr. James R. Leitch, was that ordination was not a requirement for the positions held by the four ordained ministers. Unlike Officer McClure, these workers' ordination is not an integral part of their total vocation. These support personnel are not engaged in activities traditionally considered ecclesiastical or religious. Indeed, the district court found that they were not ministers in the formal sense. We conclude they are not ministers in the McClure sense. The same analysis applies to the part-time staff. Though these workers are drawn from a restricted group, and though many of them are training to be ministers or to serve as spouses of ministers, the tasks they perform in these jobs are not of an ecclesiastical or religious nature. With respect to their employment relationship with the Seminary, these employees are not entitled to ministerial status under McClure. 33 Much of the reasoning applied to the faculty is pertinent to some of the administrative staff of the Seminary. The President and Executive Vice President of the Seminary, the chaplain, the deans of men and women, the academic deans, and those other personnel who equate to or supervise faculty should be considered ministers as well. On the other hand, those administrators whose function relates exclusively to the Seminary's finance, maintenance, and other non-academic departments, though considered ministers by the Seminary, are not ministers as we used that label in McClure. Their positions are akin to support staff positions. When churches expand their operations beyond the traditional functions essential to the propagation of their doctrine, those employed to perform tasks which are not traditionally ecclesiastical or religious are not ministers of a church entitled to McClure -type protection. In the absence of exact job descriptions of all positions on the administrative staff, we are unable to be precise as to the category of all personnel. Should the parties be unable to agree as to whether any particular administrative staff position is traditionally ecclesiastical or ministerial, the resolution of the dispute may be referred to the district court.