Court Opinion

ID: 9497736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:58:44.31187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:23.131536
License: Public Domain

GOULD, Circuit Judge,
with whom BYBEE and BEA, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:
I would have heard this case en banc, and dissent from our denial of such rehearing. As I noted in my concurrence from the original Elvig panel decision, the result in this case seems to be compelled by Bollard v. California Province of the Society of Jesus, 196 F.3d 940 (9th Cir.1999). There may be room for reasonable jurists to disagree on that, as did Judge Trott in his initial panel dissent, but I think Bollard controlling absent en banc review. At the same time, I continue to have reservations about whether Bollard was correctly decided.
In part my reservations about Bollard stem from constitutional concerns such as those that are raised by Judge Kleinfeld in his able dissent from denial of rehearing en banc. I am not yet certain I would agree with all that he would hold on the constitutional issues, but the issues that Judge Kleinfeld has voiced warrant a broader and a fresh hearing.
In part my reservations about Bollard stem from practical litigation concerns such as those that are raised by Judge Bea in his thoughtful dissent from denial of rehearing en banc, and that were earlier expressed by Judge Trott’s articulate dissent to the initial panel decision. I do not see how a church can take advantage of the affirmative defense established by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 751-52, 118 S.Ct. 2257, 141 L.Ed.2d 633 *807(1998) and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 807-08, 118 S.Ct. 2275, 141 L.Ed.2d 662 (1998) without entangling the courts in the kind of review of church affairs that the establishment clause was designed to avoid. The practical concerns stated by Judge Bea too warrant a broader and a fresh hearing.
In part my reservations about Bollard stem from my dissatisfaction with Bollard’s prior holding that the extent of the so-called “ministerial exception” is defined solely by the scope of the First Amendment’s constitutional protections guaranteeing free exercise of religion and prohibiting government’s entanglement with religion. Bollard, 196 F.3d at 945. Instead, and before reaching the thorny constitutional questions that are set on the table by my colleagues Judges Trott, Kle-infeld and Bea, I would have thought that our en banc court might profitably have pondered whether Congress itself intended a broader sway for the ministerial exception to Title VII, given its statutory basis in 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-1(a) (reciting that the subchapter shall not apply to a religious corporation or association or society with respect to employment of those of a particular religion to perform work connected with the religious entity’s activities).
This statutory exception provides an uncertain scope, but I see no value to discarding it injudiciously in favor of a solely constitutional analysis. If there is ambiguity in the statutory exception’s reach, it ought to be interpreted in a way to avoid a constitutional interpretation.
On these three lines of reasoning, I respectfully dissent.