Posted on by Mark Movsesian

European Court Rules Clergy Cannot Unionize Over Church’s Objection

In a much-anticipated decision, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled today, 11-6, that Romania did not violate the European Human Rights Convention when it refused to register a trade union that Romanian Orthodox priests had formed against the wishes of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The decision, with important implications for church autonomy, overrules a contrary judgment by a chamber of the court last year.

Article 11 of the European Convention grants citizens–including, the Grand Chamber ruled today, clergy–the right to form trade unions, subject to restrictions that are necessary to advance legitimate governmental interests, including the “protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” Here, the Grand Chamber reasoned, Romania had restricted the priests’ right to form a union in order to protect the autonomy of Romanian Orthodox Church. Among other things, the proposed union was meant to promote members’ ability to obtain representation in the Holy Synod, the Church’s highest authority, and to strike in order to advance members’ interests within the Church. By registering a union with goals like these, the Grand Chamber reasoned, the state would hamper the ability of the Church to organize and govern itself according to its own rules:

Respect for the autonomy of religious communities … implies, in particular, that the State should accept the right of such communities to react, in accordance with their own rules and interests, to any dissident movements emerging within them that might pose a threat to their cohesion, image or unity. It is … not the task of the national authorities to act as the arbiter between religious communities and the various dissident factions that exist or may emerge within them.

In other words, because the union posed a real risk to the organizational integrity of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Romania was justified in refusing to register the union–particularly given the wide “margin of appreciation” the Convention grants states with respect to church/state relations.

The Grand Chamber’s decision contains language suggesting a sweeping view of church autonomy, but one could also see it as somewhat narrow. The Grand Chamber noted that nothing would stop clergy from forming a union “that pursues aims compatible with the Church’s Statute and does not call into question the Church’s traditional hierarchical structure and decision-making procedures.” And it emphasized the the fact-specific nature of the inquiry, stating at one point that “national courts must … conduct[] an in-depth examination of the circumstances of [a] case and a thorough balancing exercise between the competing interests at stake.” The resistance to a categorical rule is reminiscent of the US Supreme Court’s analysis in Hosanna-Tabor, the “ministerial exception” case. A third-party submission by the Becket Fund and the International Center for Law and Religion Studies discussed Hosanna-Tabor, but the Grand Chamber did not expressly rely on the American decision in its own reasoning.

The case is Sindicatul Pastoral cel Bun v. Romania (July 9, 2013), available at the ECtHR’s website, here. The Becket Fund’s press release about the decision is here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Annicchino on Religious Autonomy

For our followers who read Italian, CLR Forum guest poster Pasquale Annicchino (European University Institute) has posted a comparative essay on religious autonomy in the US and Europe, The Conflict between the Autonomy of Religious Groups and Other Fundamental Rights: Recent Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Here’s the abstract:

The principle of autonomy of religious groups has acquired new importance in the recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. This article will analyze and compare the decisions by these two courts, with a particular focus on the circulation of legal arguments between the two different legal orders.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

UK Supreme Court Decides Important Ministerial Employment Case

Yesterday, the UK’s Supreme Court decided an important ministerial employment case, President of the Methodist Conference v. Preston. In many respects, Preston tracks the US Supreme Court’s recent ministerial exception case, Hosanna-Tabor, though the British case does not refer to Hosanna-Tabor and doesn’t explicitly address church autonomy concerns.

In Preston, a Methodist minister sought relief under UK employment law for unfair dismissal. The question turned on whether Preston was an “employee” for purposes of the law, which, in turn, depended on whether she worked for the church under a “contract of employment.”  By a 4-1 vote, the Supreme Court held that she did not.

In the past, Lord Sumption’s opinion explained, UK cases drew a bright line between clergy, who were understood to hold offices of an essentially spiritual nature, and mere employees. But these rulings depended on “social instincts” that do not obtain in today’s more “secular and regulated context.” Today, the question turns on the precise terms that govern a minister’s employment. In other words, the UK courts must apply what Americans would recognize as a “neutral principles of law” approach. Courts must look at the terms of a minister’s employment in light of the surrounding circumstances to see what the parties reasonably intended.

Here, Lord Sumption wrote, the context made plain that Methodist ministers like Preston are not contractual employees. Preston had no contract with the church; her employment was governed completely by the church’s constitution. Her ordination, conferred by the laying on of hands, was understood to be a lifelong covenant. Her stipend was not seen as consideration for her work, but as a subsidy to allow her to serve the Lord. In short, by its terms, ministry in the Methodist Church was “a vocation, by which candidates submit themselves to the discipline of the church for life.” No special circumstances in Preston’s case altered this conclusion.

In its insistence on looking to the particular circumstances of a plaintiff’s employment, Preston echoes the flexible approach to the definition of minister that one sees in Hosanna-Tabor. Unlike the American court, though, the British court didn’t much address the underlying church autonomy values that ministerial exceptions serve. In large part, this reticence results from the different texts the courts were construing. Preston is a straightforward statutory question without constitutional implications; Hosanna-Tabor, by contrast, depends on an understanding of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment.

(H/t: Law & Religion UK).

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Another Episcopal Church Property Dispute

This time it’s in South Carolina. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required)  on litigation between two rival factions in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. One faction, representing the leadership and about two-thirds of the membership, broke away from the national Episcopal Church in November over the national body’s liberal approach to sexuality and other issues. The minority faction has remained loyal to the national body. Both factions assert ownership of the diocese’s property, including St. Michael’s Church in Charleston (above). In total, the diocese’s church buildings, grounds, and cemeteries are worth around $500 million.

Church property disputes have become increasingly common in America, as local congregations distance themselves from more liberal national church bodies. In the Episcopal Church alone, there have been a dozen such disputes in the past few decades. Human nature being what it is, each side in such a dispute thinks of itself as the true depository of the faith, with a moral, and legal, right to church property.

Civil courts have adopted a couple of different approaches to resolving such disputes, depending on how the relevant legal instruments are written: the “deference” approach, which defers to the decision of the highest authority within the church structure, and the “neutral principles of law” approach, which attempts to resolve disputes using standard property law principles. Both approaches try to promote church autonomy by insulating internal church government and theological questions from civil court review.

I’m not sure which approach the South Carolina courts take. At the moment, the fight is whether the litigation should be in South Carolina courts at all. The national body is seeking to remove the action to federal court, where, I assume, it thinks it will get a more receptive hearing. Whichever court hears the case, the track record of prior litigation suggests the national body should be confident of ultimate victory –though of course it depends on how the deeds, trust documents, and bylaws are written. For civil-law purposes, the Episcopal Church is a hierarchical church, and courts would normally defer to the highest authority within the church–I assume that’s the national body– on ownership of church property. That’s what happened in a recent case involving the Fall Church in Virginia. If the national body wants to recognize the smaller, loyal faction as the rightful owners of church property, the majority faction will likely have to find somewhere else to pray.

Posted on by JCPW

Helfand on Implied Consent and the Contraception Mandate

Michael Helfand (Pepperdine University School of Law) has posted What is a ‘Church’?: Implied Consent and the Contraception Mandate. The abstract follows.

This Article considers the “religious employer” exception to the “contraception mandate” – that is, the “preventative care” requirements announced by Department of Health and Human Services pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This exception has triggered significant litigation with a variety of employers claiming that they have been excluding from the “religious employer” classification in violation of both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In considering these claims, this Article applies an “implied consent” framework to these cases, which grounds the authority of religious institutions in the presumed consent of their members. On such an account, consent can be assumed so long as members understood the unique religious objectives of the institution when they joined, thereby implicitly authorizing the institution to make rules related to accomplishing these uniquely religious objectives. Building on this implied consent framework, this Article argues that the First Amendment should protect institutions from the requirements of the contraception mandate so long as these institutions were both organized around a core religious mission and where that religious mission was open and obvious to employees. In such circumstances, courts should presume that employees recognized the unique religious objectives of their employer and thereby implicitly authorized their employer to make rules related to achieving these religious goals.

Posted on by JCPW

Brownstein on the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions

Alan E. Brownstein (University of California, Davis – School of Law) has posted Protecting the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions. The abstract follows.

This article is a preliminary inquiry into the question of whether the freedom of the Church, as a distinct religious institution, can be justified from an American legal perspective. The first part of the article identifies respect for the individual dignity and autonomy of the person as a primary justification for providing distinctive legal protection to religious liberty. It goes on to discuss whether distinctive religious liberty protection for religious institutions can be derived from the dignitary interests of the institution’s members – and if so, whether there is some limit beyond which institutional religious liberty claims cannot be grounded in the individual dignitary interests of congregants or constituents.

The second and longer part of the Article examines whether an argument for protecting and accommodating the autonomy of religious institutions can be grounded in American history during the 1700’s and early 1800’s. The history of this period includes multiple cross currents of values and interests that very by time and region – making it difficult to reach more than tentative conclusions. However, the Protestant commitment by religious liberty proponents to the belief that each man must judge for himself on matters relating to religion, the virulent anti-Catholicism of the period, at least some of which may be attributed to fear of and antipathy toward top down ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the prevalence of anti-clerical attitudes suggest some limits to the American commitment to the freedom of the Church as an institution. Clearly, a sphere of religious liberty extended to the local congregation and to a considerable extent to democratically created and accountable ecclesiastical decision-making bodies. It may be argued, however, that Americans of this period viewed non-democratic, hierarchical religious institutional structures – that challenged the intrinsic right of individual conscience in matters of faith – to be much less deserving of respect and protection.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Hearing at ECtHR in Spanish Church Autonomy Case

This has been a busy law-and-religion news week in the United States, but there was a major story at the European Court of Human Rights as well. On Wednesday, the Grand Chamber heard argument in Fernández Martínez v. Spain, a case that could have major implications for church autonomy in Europe.

Under the 1979 Concordat between Spain and the Holy See, public schools in Spain must offer optional classes in Catholicism. The instructors are public employees, but must be approved by local bishops. In Fernández Martínez, a public school refused to renew the contract of one such teacher, a married, laicized priest named José Fernández Martínez, after the local bishop voiced his objections. The bishop argued that Fernández Martínez had “given scandal,” an offense under canon law, by allowing himself to be photographed by a newspaper, along with his family, at a meeting of a group calling for optional priestly celibacy. Fernández Martínez claimed that the dismissal violated his rights to privacy, family life, and expression, but the Spanish Constitutional Court and, last May, a chamber of the ECtHR, disagreed. He then sought review in the Grand Chamber.

Wednesday’s hearing was interesting and, at times, fiery. The government presented the case as a straightforward matter of religious autonomy and state neutrality. The bishop had objected to Fernández Martínez on religious grounds, it explained; given the terms of the Concordat, the government had no choice but to defer. The government surely could not second-guess the bishop’s conclusion that someone charged with teaching Catholicism had violated religious law.  The government emphasized that the Church did not have Read more

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Hatzis on Anti-Discrimination Law and Clergy in the U.K.

Nicholas Hatzis (University of Oxford) has posted The Church-Clergy Relationship and Anti-Discrimination Law. The abstract follows.

Should antidiscrimination norms apply to the relationship between a religious group and its clergy? In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v EEOC the US Supreme Court affirmed the existence of a “ministerial exception” which bars discrimination claims by ministers of religion against their church. In 2005 the House of Lords had reached the opposite conclusion, ruling, in Percy v Board of National Mission of the Church of Scotland, that the decision to dismiss an ordained minister was not a spiritual matter falling outside the scope of secular law. This article examines the constitutional foundations of the ministerial exception, argues that Percy ignored important aspects of church autonomy and suggests that courts should consider creating a narrowly tailored rule exempting decisions to appoint or remove clergy from the scope of anti-discrimination law.

 

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Thanks to Barak Richman and Dan Crane

Thanks to Barak Richman and Dan Crane for participating in our first online debate at CLR Forum, “Are Conservative Rabbis a Cartel?” You can follow the posts by scrolling to the “Debates” category over on the right. We’re very grateful for the thoughtful and fun exchange. Come back soon!

Posted on by Dan Crane · 1 Comment

Establishment Clause Creep and Antitrust Creep

This will be the end of the line for the back-and-forth between Barak and me, so let me thank Barak for his very thoughtful and cordial correspondence on these interesting questions.  This is not a moment to say “see you in court,” but to hope that our dialogue has furthered our respective understanding of the issues.

In earlier posts, I hinted that application of the antitrust laws to rabbinical or pastoral hiring practices would run afoul of the Establishment Clause, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, which recognized a “ministerial exception” to the application of antidiscrimination law to the hiring of religious ministers.  In my view, a fair reading of Hosanna-Tabor would prevent an antitrust suit involving rabbinical hiring.  However, for purposes of this post, I would like to respond more generally to Barak’s claim that “entanglement” concerns lead to “Establishment Clause creep,” insulating from legal review the harmful decisions of religious organizations.

Barak’s concerns over “creep” fall into two categories.  One concerns the externalization of costs from religious organizations to others–his example of people cutting across the neighbor’s lawn to get to church.  This is an easy case for me, because religious organizations should not be allowed to justify externalizing costs onto others in the name of religious independence.   Of course,  one could argue that all purely private activities end up externalizing costs or benefits onto others (i.e., functional families make for happy neighborhoods, dysfunctional ones for unhappy neighborhoods), but I’m confident that sensible lines can be drawn between what is mostly internal and what is significantly external.

What about cases where the harms, if any, are all or mostly internalized within the religious organization or by its members?   Consider two examples:  ritualistic human sacrifice of willing victims and regulations applied to require churches to install wheelchair ramps.  In neither of these cases is the Establishment Clause or free exercise defense plausible.   In the human sacrifice case, the act is  morally abhorrent and the legal prohibition clear.  Any ostensible free exercise interest is outweighed by the state’s legitimate interest in preserving human life and there is no danger of entanglement.  In the wheelchair ramp case, the legal requirement concerns a physical structure far enough removed from the purposes and values of the religious organization that there is little risk that enforcing the building code would require civil authorities to inquire into the existential purposes of the church and their relationship to the civil law.

Not so for antitrust law (and perhaps other business torts as well).  Antitrust is not justified on the grounds that collaboration among rivals is inherently immoral or  injurious.  Rather, it is justified on instrumental grounds–that competition among business firms tends to increase output and decrease prices to the benefit of consumers.  As I said in earlier posts, it’s awkward to apply this assumption wholesale to religious organizations, since many such organizations would resist the idea that they are ordinary economic actors or exist in order to achieve a better deployment of society’s scarce social resources.  And most religious groups would strongly deny that they would function better if they fostered internal economic rivalry.

For example, for mendicant orders like the Franciscans, the “employees” are bound to an oath of poverty.   They are expressly prohibited from being Chicago School “rational profit-maximizers.”  If the Franciscan order put in place rules to prevent local parishes from trying to attract Franciscan monks through promises of higher compensation, that would run counter to the Sherman Act’s assumption that economic rivalry results in an optimal allocation of resources.  But I’m doubtful that the Sherman Act’s assumption generally holds in the religious organization context.  And, even if it sometimes might hold, it would be  troubling to ask courts to sift through the evidence on different religious organizations to determine when it does hold and when it doesn’t–when the existential purposes of a particular sect would be furthered by greater economic rivalry and when they would not.  That, in my view, would raise serious entanglement problems.  Do we want courts deciding what degree of poverty is appropriate for Franciscan monks?

[I’m amending my post from last night to add a further anecdote from the Christian tradition that illustrates the problem.  In the gospel accounts, when Jesus enters the temple he finds merchants engaging in commerce and drives them out with a whip, saying that God’s house should be one of prayer, not of thievery.  Many churches today are reluctant even to sell sermon tapes or Christian books in the church foyer because of this and similar admonitions.  That this is a concern in the Christian tradition does not make it universally a concern, but it does suggest an entanglement problem if courts were to undertake an inquiry into when commercial transactions are permissible, and when not, within a particular religious tradition.]

In short, I’m less concerned about Establishment Clause creep than about antitrust creep.  Economic rivalry is good sometimes, but not always.  Unlike Barak, I wouldn’t start with the assumption that antitrust law should apply universally to all human endeavor unless a special exception is warranted.  I would start with the assumption that antitrust should apply to business and commerce and only extend it to other endeavors if the case for extension were clear and unencumbered by competing religious, social, or moral values.  As to rabbinical collusion, I’m not persuaded that case has been made.