Court Opinion

ID: 9497733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:58:44.301338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:23.118945
License: Public Domain

W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
with whom KOZINSKI, GRABER, and FISHER, Circuit Judges, join, concurring in the order denying rehearing en banc:
Each of the dissents from the denial of rehearing en banc recognizes that our decision in this case follows our earlier decision in Bollard v. California Province of the Society of Jesus, 196 F.3d 940 (9th Cir.1999). Judge Kleinfeld, Judge Gould, and Judge Bea contend that both Bollard and the case before us constitute constitutionally forbidden intrusions into the employment relationship between a church and its minister. Judge Kleinfeld also contends that our decisions in Bollard and this case conflict with the decisions of our sister circuits.
I disagree with both contentions. I write to emphasize that the rule announced in Bollard and applied in this case is consistent with the constitutional underpinnings of the ministerial exception, and that every court that has addressed a minister’s ability to recover damages for sexual harassment has reached the same conclusion we have.
I. Intrusion into the Relationship Between a Church and Its Minister
Title VII does not contain an exception for plaintiffs employed as ministers. Rather, the “ministerial exception” to Title VII is carved out from the statute based on the commands of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment. Because the “ministerial exception” is carved out of the otherwise applicable requirements of Title VII, the scope of the exception is limited to that which is required by the First Amendment. The ministerial exception protects the church’s interest in choosing its ministers, and in deciding on the duties to be performed by those ministers. For exam-*791pie, the ministerial exception permits the Catholic Church to 'restrict the priesthood to men, and permits a church to prescribe the duties of a minister, free from scrutiny-under Title VII.
In both Bollard and this case, the appeals came to us on motions to dismiss under .Rule 12(b)(6) and on the pleadings under Rule 12(c) or 12(h)(2). We therefore assumed the truth of the allegations in the complaints. In Bollard, a Jesuit novice complained of repeated unwelcome homosexual sexual advances during a six-year period by his superiors in the Jesuit order. Bollard brought the offensive conduct to the attention of priests within the Jesuit hierarchy, but got no response. He finally resigned his position and brought suit for damages for sexual harassment under Title VII.
Bollard was not fired from his position as a Jesuit novice. Indeed, the Jesuits were entirely satisfied with his job performance and urged him to stay. Nor did Bollard seek reinstatement or changes in his duties. He sought only compensatory damages for the harm he suffered from the sexual harassment to which he had been subjected. We allowed his suit seeking such damages to go forward.
In this case, Elvig was an associate pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church. She was subjected to sexual harassment by her superior, the pastor at her church. She complained of the offending conduct to appropriate church authorities, who took no action to stop the harassment. The pastor then retaliated against her for having complained about the harassment. El-vig filed a complaint with the EEOC. She was thereafter terminated from her ministry at Calvin Presbyterian Church, and was prevented from seeking employment as a pastor in other Presbyterian churches.
We declined to allow damages to Elvig for having been terminated, or for having been prevented from ■ seeking ministerial employment at other churches. We held that those actions came within the ministerial exception to Title VII, and that damages for these actions would have constituted an unconstitutional intrusion into the ministerial relationship. On the other hand, following Bollard, we allowed Elvig to seek damages for the sexual harassment and retaliation to which she was subjected:
[T]he termination of Elvig’s ministry and her inability to find other pastoral employment are consequences of protected employment decisions. Consequently, a damage award based on lost or reduced pay Elvig may have suffered from those employment decisions would necessarily trench on the Church’s protected ministerial decisions. The same would be true of emotional distress or reputational damages attributable to those decisions. On the other hand, El-vig may recover for emotional distress and reputational harm caused by the sexual harassment itself — or by retaliatory harassment — because such harassment implicates ... decisions the ministerial exception does not protect.
Elvig v. Calvin Presbyterian Church, 375 F.3d 951, 966 (9th Cir.2004).
Our holdings in Bollard and this case were narrow: (1) In Bollard, the plaintiff did not seek reinstatement or damages based on a failure to reinstate. In this case, we did not allow Elvig a remedy that would have compelled the Church to permit her to seek other ministerial employment, and did not allow damages resulting from Elvig’s termination and inability to obtain other ministerial employment. (2) In neither - Bollard nor this case did we require the defendant churches to articulate a religious justification for their decisions to hire, fire, promote, or proscribe the duties of ministers. In Bollard, we noted that the church explicitly disavowed *792any religious justification for the homosexual sexual harassment to which Bollard had been subjected, leaving unaddressed the question of whether sexual harassment based on a religious justification was constitutionally protected. In this case, the church did not assert a religious justification for the sexual harassment to which Elvig claimed she was subjected; it denied that it occurred at all.
Judge Kleinfeld contends that the availability of damages against a church for sexual harassment necessarily interferes with the church’s constitutionally protected decision to hire and retain its ministers. He writes,
[T]o prevent lawsuits alleging sexual harassment, churches will fire ministers who they think expose them to risk of damage awards and hire those who they think will not. So the Elvig majority’s opinion does indeed impinge on churches’ hiring and firing decisions.
Kleinfeld dissent at 799. This argument proves too much. Under Judge Kleinfeld’s reasoning, an altar boy’s suit against the church for sexual abuse by a minister is constitutionally forbidden. Damages in such suits are likely to be higher than the limited damages available in Title VII sexual harassment suits brought by ministers. In addition, the number of sexual abuse suits brought by parishioners dwarfs the few sexual harassment suits that have been, and are likely to be, brought by ministers. The effect of sexual abuse suits brought by parishioners on the employment practices of the church is thus almost certain to be far greater than the effect of sexual harassment suits by ministers. Yet it is clearly established law that such suits are not constitutionally barred, see, e.g., Martinelli v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., 196 F.3d 409, 430-31 (2d Cir.1999); Nutt v. Norwich Roman Catholic Diocese, 921 F.Supp. 66, 72-74 (D.Conn.1995); Moses v. Diocese of Colorado, 863 P.2d 310, 319-21 (Colo.1993), and I do not believe that Judge Kleinfeld would advocate a change in that law.
Judge Kleinfeld contends that the precedents allowing suits seeking to redress sexual abuse by a minister can be distinguished because “criminal and civil law applicable to sexual abuse of a parishioner does not regulate a church’s selection, training, and supervision of its own ministers.” Kleinfeld dissent at 804. But under his own reasoning, this is not so. If the threat of damage awards in suits arising out of sexual abuse of parishioners is even greater than in Title VII sexual harassment suits (as I believe it is), such suits not only “regulate a church’s selection, training, and supervision of its own ministers,” to use Judge Kleinfeld’s phrase. They “regulate” to an even greater extent than sexual harassment suits. Yet Judge Kleinfeld recognizes that sexual abuse suits are permissible under the First Amendment. So it cannot be that the First Amendment prohibits suits simply because they have the potential to affect (or “regulate”) churches’ hiring and firing decisions.
The First Amendment does not exempt religious institutions from all statutes that regulate employment. For example, the First Amendment does not exempt religious institutions from laws that regulate the minimum wage or the use of child labor, even though both involve employment relationships. See Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 888, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 (1990) (citing Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Sec’y of Labor, 471 U.S. 290, 105 S.Ct. 1953, 85 L.Ed.2d 278 (1985) (minimum wage); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 64 S.Ct. 438, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944) (child labor)). The First Amendment protects a church’s right to hire, fire, promote, and *793assign duties to its ministers as it sees fit not because churches are exempt from all employment regulations (for they are not), but rather because judicial review of those particular employment actions would interfere with rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. As we explained in Bollard, suits seeking damages for sexual harassment do not pose a threat to First Amendment rights, and are therefore permitted.
Judge Bea contends that the availability of suits against a church for sexual harassment will produce unconstitutionally intrusive inquiries into church affairs whenever a church asserts a defense under Burlington Indus. Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 118 S.Ct. 2257, 141 L.Ed.2d 633 (1998), that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct the harassment. He misunderstands the scope of the Ellerth inquiry. As we wrote in Bollard:
[The Ellerth inquiry] is a restricted inquiry. Nothing in the character of this defense will require a jury to evaluate religious doctrine or the “reasonableness” of the religious practices followed within the Jesuit order. Instead, the jury must make secular judgments about the nature and severity of the harassment and what measures, if any, were taken by the Jesuits to prevent or correct it. The limited nature of the inquiry, combined with the ability of the district court to control discovery, can prevent a wide-ranging intrusion into sensitive religious matters.
196 F.3d at 950; see also Elvig, 375 F.3d at 963 (“The reasonableness component of the Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense evaluates an employer’s actions in responding to sexual harassment rather than the motivations for that response.” (emphasis in original)). A court inquiring into the reasonableness of the steps a church has taken to prevent or correct sexual harassment need “intrude no further in church autonomy ... than [a court does], for example, in allowing parishioners’ civil suits against a church for the negligent supervision of ministers who have subjected them to inappropriate sexual behavior.” Bollard, 196 F.3d at 947-48 (citing Martinelli v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., 10 F.Supp.2d 138 (D.Conn.1998); Nutt, 921 F.Supp. at 66; Moses, 863 P.2d at 310).
II. Decisions of Other Circuits
The lead case establishing the contours of the ministerial exception is McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553 (5th Cir.1972). The McClure court wrote:
The relationship between an organized church and its ministers is its lifeblood. The minister is the chief instrument by which the church seeks to fulfill its purpose. Matters touching this relationship must necessarily be recognized as of prime ecclesiastical concern. Just as the initial function of selecting a minister is a matter of church administration and government, so are the functions which accompany such a selection. It is unavoidably true that these include the determination of a minister’s salary, his place of assignment, and the duty he is to perform in the furtherance of the religious mission of the church.
Id. at 558-59.
A sexual harassment claim is an unusual claim under Title VII (and, indeed, for that reason was somewhat slow to be accepted as part of Title VII). It is not a claim based upon gender or racial inequality in hiring, firing, promotions, or duties, as in McClure. Rather, it is a kind of statutory tort suit, allowing a damage recovery for sex discrimination in the form of sexually-based abusive behavior by co-workers in the workplace.
When we decided Bollard, only one court had confronted a directly comparable *794situation, in which a minister sought damages from a church for sexual harassment by another minister. The case was Black v. Snyder, 471 N.W.2d 715 (Minn.Ct.App.1991), in which the Minnesota Court of Appeals held that there was no constitutional bar to a sexual harassment claim for damages brought by a pastor. Since Bollard, two more courts have confronted directly comparable situations. Both courts came to the same conclusion we did. The opinions in both cases extensively quote from, and rely on, our analysis in Bollard. See McKelvey v. Pierce, 173 N.J. 26, 800 A.2d 840 (2002) (New Jersey Supreme Court sustained a claim for damages brought by a priesthood candidate based on sexual harassment); Dolquist v. Heartland Presbytery, 342 F.Supp.2d 996 (D.Kan.2004) (district court sustained a claim for damages brought by a pastor for sexual harassment). No court confronting a sexual harassment claim for damages brought by a minister or would-be minister — before or after Bollard — has disagreed with Bollard.
Judge Kleinfeld contends that we have departed in Bollard and in this case from the decisions of our sister circuits, but this is not true. In both cases, we cited and quoted McClure (as well as a number of cases following McClure), and indicated our full agreement with them. As we wrote in Bollard:
These First Amendment restrictions on Title VII provide important protections to churches that seek to choose their representatives free from government interference and according to the dictates of faith and conscience.
* * *
A church’s selection of its own clergy is [a] core matter of ecclesiastical governance with which the state may not constitutionally interfere. A church must retain unfettered freedom in its choice of ministers because ministers represent the church to the people. As the Fifth Circuit has written, they act as the church’s “lifeblood.” McClure, 460 F.2d at 558.
196 F.3d at 945 (some citations omitted); see also Elvig, 375 F.3d at 961.
All of the circuit cases discussed and cited by Judge Kleinfeld in his dissent fall in the McClure line of cases, in which a church’s decision to hire, to fire, and to prescribe the duties of its ministers was constitutionally protected. Judge Klein-feld discusses five circuit cases in text. Kleinfeld dissent at 801-02. Those cases, and their holdings, are as follows: Combs v. Central Texas Annual Conference of United Methodist Church, 173 F.3d 343 (5th Cir.1999) (church’s decision to terminate minister held constitutionally protected); Young v. Northern Ill. Conference of United Methodist Church, 21 F.3d 184 (7th Cir.1994) (church’s decision to deny promotion and discharge probationary minister held constitutionally protected); Rayburn v. General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, 772 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir.1985) (church’s denial of pastoral position to applicant held constitutionally protected); Alicea-Hernandez v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 320 F.3d 698 (7th Cir.2003) (church spokesperson, acting as a “minister” within the meaning of the exception, complained of having been given poor working conditions and replaced by a less qualified male; church’s actions held constitutionally protected); EEOC v. Catholic University of America, 83 F.3d 455 (D.C.Cir.1996) (nun, acting as a “minister” within the meaning of the exception, denied tenure in Department of Canon Law; church’s decision held constitutionally protected). Judge Kleinfeld cites two additional cases in footnotes. Kleinfeld dissent at 799 n. 6, 801 n. 22. Those cases, and their holdings, are as follows: Gellington *795v. Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, 203 F.3d 1299 (11th Cir.2000) (minister reassigned to less desirable church and forced to resign; church’s actions held constitutionally protected); McClure, 460 F.2d 553 (5th Cir.1972) (female minister received lower salary and fewer benefits than male ministers and ultimately terminated; church’s actions held constitutionally protected). None of these circuit cases is inconsistent with our decisions in Bollard and in this case. Indeed, we made clear in both Bollard and this case that we agreed with the holdings in this line of cases.
Conclusion
Our decisions in Bollard and this case are fully consistent with the First Amendment and the “ministerial exception” to Title VII. Under Bollard and this case, a church may hire, fire, promote, refuse to promote, and prescribe the duties of its ministers, free from judicial scrutiny under Title VII. It need advance no justification, religious or otherwise, for such actions.
Bollard and this case do, however, hold that sexual harassment by a minister is not protected by the First Amendment. A church is required to comply with Title VII when a minister is sexually harassed by another minister employed by the church, just as a church is required to comply with state tort laws when a parishioner is sexually abused by a minister employed by the church. In neither of these circumstances is a church protected by the First Amendment.
In so holding, neither Bollard nor this case deviates from the holdings of other courts. No court has ever held that sexual harassment by a minister is protected by the First Amendment. In fact, every court confronted with the issue has held that it is not.