Opinion ID: 1818100
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Motion for a TRO

Text: The elements required for the issuance of a TRO are the same as the elements required for the issuance of a preliminary injunction. Butler v. Alabama Judicial Inquiry Comm'n, 111 F.Supp.2d 1224, 1229 (M.D.Ala.2000); United States v. Metropolitan Dade County, 815 F.Supp. 1475, 1477 (S.D.Fla.1993). A plaintiff seeking a [TRO] has the burden of demonstrating `(1) that without the [TRO] the plaintiff would suffer immediate and irreparable injury; (2) that the plaintiff has no adequate remedy at law; (3) that the plaintiff has at least a reasonable chance of success on the ultimate merits of his case; and (4) that the hardship imposed on the defendant by the [TRO] would not unreasonably outweigh the benefit accruing to the plaintiff.' Ormco Corp. v. Johns, 869 So.2d 1109, 1113 (Ala.2003) (quoting Perley v. Tapscan, Inc., 646 So.2d 585, 587 (Ala.1994)) (emphasis added). [A] petition for a temporary restraining order . . . addresses itself to the sound discretion of the trial court, Churchill v. Board of Trustees of Univ. of Alabama in Birmingham, 409 So.2d 1382, 1389 (Ala.1982), overruled on other grounds, Ex parte Waterjet Sys., Inc., 758 So.2d 505 (Ala.1999), and [i]f no abuse of discretion is shown, [its] action will not be disturbed on appeal. Falk v. Falk, 355 So.2d 722, 725 (Ala.Civ.App. 1978). Discretion is informed by the elements of a TRO, Chase Manhattan Bank v. Dime Savings Bank of New York, 961 F.Supp. 275, 276 (M.D.Fla.1997), with particular reference in this case to the plaintiff's chance of success on the merits. It is undisputed that the Church is incorporated under the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Act, Ala.Code 1975, §§ 10-3A-1 to -225 (the Act). Lott sought access to the Church's books and financial records on the basis of § 10-3A-43, which provides: Each corporation shall keep correct and complete books and records of account and shall keep minutes of the proceedings of its members, board of directors and committees having any of the authority of the board of directors; and shall keep at its registered office or principal office in Alabama a record of the names and addresses of its members entitled to vote, directors and officers. All books and records of a corporation may be inspected by any member, director or officer, or his agent or attorney, for any proper purpose at any reasonable time.  (Emphasis added.) Lott contends that it was both necessary and proper for the court to issue a TRO to preserve his membership in the Church, and, by extension, his right to inspect the books. Unless the court acted to preserve [his] membership status quo, pending inspection, Lott insists, his statutory right to inspect was rendered meaningless. Lott's brief, at 14. The trial court concluded that it had no jurisdiction over the internal workings of a church group under the facts of this case. Thus, the issue is whether the trial court exceeded its discretion in refusing to enjoin the Church from expelling Lott after he invoked his rights under § 10-3A-43. We hold that it did not. Courts are constrained by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution from intrud[ing] into a religious organization's determination of . . . ecclesiastical matters such as theological doctrine, church discipline, or the conformity of members to standards of faith and morality. Singh v. Singh, 114 Cal.App.4th 1264, 1275, 9 Cal.Rptr.3d 4, 12 (2004) (emphasis added). Of course, [Alabama] courts concerned with restraints under the First Amendment applicable to the states through the Fourteenth [Amendment] are bound by the authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment enunciated by the United States Supreme Court. 114 Cal. App.4th at 1280, 9 Cal.Rptr.3d at 16. To be sure, this Court has reviewed the actions of churches in expelling members or electing officers. See, e.g., Yates v. El Bethel Primitive Baptist Church, 847 So.2d 331 (Ala.2002); Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church v. Nixon, 340 So.2d 746 (Ala.1976); In re Galilee Baptist Church, 279 Ala. 393, 186 So.2d 102 (1966). Jurisdiction was exercised in such cases, however, only insofar as to determine whether an election meeting of a church, or a similar meeting, was conducted so improperly as to render its results void. Yates, 847 So.2d at 335-36 (the trial court properly invalidated an election of deacons, where the election meeting (1) was irregular in several material respects; (2) was conducted to circumvent a prior, unappealed injunction; and (3) involved no issues of differences in religious faith, creed, or ecclesiastical doctrine). See Nixon, supra (in an appeal from the grant of the pastor's motion to dismiss filed pursuant to Ala. R. Civ. P. 12(b), former church members, alleging that they had been improperly expelled, were entitled to present evidence of invalidity or [ir]regularity of the meeting in which they were expelled); In re Galilee, supra (court's inquiry was limited to whether the meeting convened for the pastor's removal was so irregular as to void the results). Under certain circumstances, therefore, our courts have decided whether a church had acted in accordance with its established procedures. It does not follow, however, that a court may interfere in a disciplinary matter before the church acts. On the contrary, in an action to preempt church discipline, a federal district court has held that [t]he mere expulsion from a religious society, with the exclusion from a religious community, is not a harm for which courts can grant a remedy. Grunwald v. Bornfreund, 696 F.Supp. 838, 840-41 (E.D.N.Y.1988). See also Alexander v. Shiloh Baptist Church, 62 Ohio Misc.2d 79, 592 N.E.2d 918 (1991). Grunwald involved an action by Yudah Grunwald against Ben Zion Bornfreund and others, alleging that the defendants had engaged in a fraudulent investment scheme, in violation of state and federal law, including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962. Grunwald v. Bornfreund, 668 F.Supp. 128, 130 (E.D.N.Y.1987). Grunwald moved for a writ of mandamus, prohibiting the `Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, its Rabbinical Court and its members' . . . from temporarily or permanently excommunicating [him] from the branch of Orthodox Judaism of which he was a member. 696 F.Supp. at 839. The threat of excommunication was allegedly intended to pressure Grunwald into dismissing his action. 696 F.Supp. at 839-40. The court denied the motion and declined to issue the writ, explaining that the threat of excommunication was not a harm for which courts will provide a remedy. 696 F.Supp. at 840. As exemplified by Grunwald, this case differs fundamentally from the cases cited by Lott, which involved no disciplinary issues, or which involved post -expulsion procedural challenges. See, e.g., Mount Zion Baptist Church v. Second Baptist Church of Reno, 83 Nev. 367, 432 P.2d 328 (1967); Baugh v. Thomas, 56 N.J. 203, 265 A.2d 675 (1970); Watson v. Christie, 288 A.D.2d 29, 732 N.Y.S.2d 405 (2001). The mere threat of expulsion, which is all the TRO motion in this case involved, obviously did not involve an issue regarding a secular, or neutral, procedural defect. [3] A challenge such as this one essentially alleges violation of a substantive right, such as a right to be free from the arbitrary action of an ecclesiastical body. However, the United States Supreme Court has clearly stated that no such right exists. Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the United States of America & Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976). In Milivojevich, the Court considered whether the Illinois Supreme Court had properly invalidated the decision of the Holy Assembly of Bishops and the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church (the Mother Church) to defrock Bishop Dionisije Milivojevich on the ground that [the decision] was `arbitrary' because a `detailed review of the evidence disclose[d] that the proceedings resulting in Bishop Dionisije's removal and defrockment were not in accordance with the prescribed procedure of the constitution and the penal code of the Serbian Orthodox Church.' 426 U.S. at 718, 96 S.Ct. 2372. The Court held that the inquiries made by the Illinois Supreme Court into matters of ecclesiastical cognizance and polity and the court's action pursuant thereto contravened the First and Fourteenth Amendments. 426 U.S. at 698, 96 S.Ct. 2372. In doing so, it explained: 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. . . . `. . . .' Indeed, it is the essence of religious faith that ecclesiastical decisions are reached and are to be accepted as matters of faith whether or not rational or measurable by objective criteria. Constitutional concepts of due process, involving secular notions of `fundamental fairness' or impermissible objectives, are therefore hardly relevant to such matters of ecclesiastical cognizance.  426 U.S. at 712-16, 96 S.Ct. 2372 (emphasis added; footnotes omitted). See also Kaufmann v. Sheehan, 707 F.2d 355 (8th Cir.1983); Green v. United Pentecostal Church Int'l, 899 S.W.2d 28 (Tex.Ct.App. 1995). Milivojevich involved the discipline of a bishop, rather than a church member such as Lott. Nevertheless, [f]or essentially the same reasons that courts have refused to interfere with the basic ecclesiastical decision of choosing the minister . . ., this Court must not interfere with the fundamental ecclesiastical concern of determining who is and who is not [a Church] member. [4] Burgess v. Rock Creek Baptist Church, 734 F.Supp. 30, 33 (D.D.C. 1990). See also Kral v. Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, 746 F.2d 450 (8th Cir.1984); Nunn v. Black, 506 F.Supp. 444, 448 (W.D.Va.) (the fact that the local church may have departed arbitrarily from its established expulsion procedures in removing the plaintiffs is of no constitutional consequence, whether one appeals the First, Fifth, or Fourteenth Amendments), aff'd, 661 F.2d 925 (4th Cir.1981); Caples v. Nazareth Church of Hopewell Ass'n, 245 Ala. 656, 660, 18 So.2d 383, 386 (1944) (`we have no power to revise or question ordinary acts of church membership, or of excision from membership'). Lott's motion stated no grounds for a TRO, other than an allegedly intractable disagreement over rights of access [to] and copying [of] Church records. In seeking to preempt church discipline on these grounds, the motion for a TRO essentially invited the court to become embroiled in the merits of a fundamental ecclesiastical concern with which the courts must have nothing to do, namely, determining who is and who is not [a Church] member. Burgess, 734 F.Supp. at 33. Lott has cited no case preempting ecclesiastical discipline as he urged the trial court to do, and we have found none. Because Lott failed to show a reasonable chance of success on the merits, the trial court did not err in denying his motion for a TRO.