Patterson Buchanan Persuades 9th Circuit En Banc Court in Religious Freedom Case

An 11-judge en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled in favor of the Catholic Church in a case testing a religious community's First Amendment right to be free from government interference in employment decisions concerning its ministers. The plaintiff in the case, Cesar Rosas, was a Catholic seminarian from Mexico on a ministerial placement in Marysville, Washington, who alleged he was owed overtime pay for work he performed. The Honorable Ricardo S. Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed his claim, concluding that it was barred by the "ministerial exception," which protects many internal decisions by communities of faith from government interference.

On appeal, Patterson Buchanan's legal team of Karen Kalzer and Nicole Brodie urged the Ninth Circuit reaffirm its traditional reluctance to "impinge on the church's prerogative to choose its ministers or to exercise its religious beliefs in the context of employing its ministers." The court's three-judge panel on March 16, 2010, unanimously affirmed the district court, adopting a protective standard for applying the ministerial exception instead of the narrower exception advocated by the plaintiff. On August 6, 2010, however, the Ninth Circuit agreed to vacate this decision and reconsider the case en banc.

Arguing the case in the en banc rehearing, Mike Patterson emphasized that under any test the Ninth Circuit might adopt, a seminarian like Mr. Rosas would fall under the ministerial exception. The court agreed. In a unanimous decision issued on December 10, 2010, the panel wrote:

We hold that the First Amendment considerations relevant to an ordained minister apply equally to a person who, though not yet ordained, has entered into a church-recognized seminary program to become a minister and who brings suit concerning employment decisions arising from work as a seminarian. The principle of “allowing the church to choose its representatives using whatever criteria it deems relevant” ... necessarily applies not only to those persons who already are ordained ministers, but also to those persons who are actively in the process of becoming ordained ministers. Similarly, we can no more ask the church for a religious justification for its decisions concerning seminarians (ordained ministers in training) than we can ask the church “to articulate a religious justification for its personnel decisions” concerning its ordained ministers.

The case is Rosas v. Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle.