Ninth Circuit Affirms First Amendment Protection for Church Employment Decisions

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on March 16, 2010 issued a unanimous panel decision affirming that the constitutional wall between church and state provides strong protections to communities of faith from lawsuits over employment matters involving their ministers. In issuing its decision on the application of the "ministerial exception" that protects many church decisions from government interference, the appeals court announced a new test for when this exception applies.

The plaintiff in the case, a Catholic seminarian from Mexico who was engaged in a ministerial placement in the St. Mary Parish in Marysville, Washington, alleged that he was owed overtime pay for work he performed. Judge 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.

In the appeal before the Ninth Circuit, Patterson Buchanan attorneys Karen Kalzer and Nicole Brodie argued on behalf of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle that the ministerial exception bars a lawsuit when the very process of adjudicating the claims inherently would result in excessive entanglement of civil and religious matters. Past Ninth Circuit rulings have been careful not to "impinge on the church's prerogative to choose its ministers or to exercise its religious beliefs in the context of employing its ministers," they argued, and the ministerial exception applies not only to the selection of a minister for service but also to the "functions which accompany that selection," including questions of pay.

The appeals court agreed, affirming the district court's decision. The Ninth Circuit rejected the plaintiff's argument that the ministerial exception only protects a religious community where the government regulation would impose an actual burden on the community's religious beliefs and would interfere with its freedom to choose its ministers or practice its beliefs. The court also agreed with the Archdiocese that the plaintiff here was a "minister" for purposes of the ministerial exception. To answer this question the court announced that it was adopting a test that is more protective of churches than the test that the plaintiff had advocated.

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

Postscript: On August 6, 2010, the Ninth Circuit took the unusual step of granting en banc reconsideration of the March 16 decision by the three-judge panel. An eleven-judge panel of the court heard oral arguments in late September and on December 10, 2010, issued a unanimous decision in which it declined to decide what the ministerial exception test should be generally but agreed with Patterson Buchanan that under any test, a seminarian falls within the exception.