California Supreme Court takes up whether ministers can sue religious organizations over wages
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In December, this column addressed a recent Court of Appeal ruling that the First Amendment-based ministerial exception, barring ministers from bringing certain claims against their religious employers, does not categorically bar a minister’s claims for failure to pay minimum wages and overtime.
In Lorenzo v. San Francisco Zen Center, Division Five of the San Francisco-based First District Court of Appeal concluded “the ministerial exception does not bar every employment claim for lost or unpaid wages. Instead, it only bars those claims that necessarily require an inquiry into a religious entity’s internal government that are closely linked to the entity’s faith and doctrine.”
California Supreme Court grants review
On Feb. 11, the California Supreme Court agreed to review the Lorenzo ruling. The question the California Supreme Court agreed to hear was: “Does the ministerial exception arising under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution categorically preclude wage and hour claims by a minister against a religious organization without any inquiry into whether the claim touches upon any ecclesiastical concern?”
In other words, is a religious employer excused from wage claims brought by its minister-employees simply because it is a religious employer or, instead, are such claims only limited to the extent the religious employer can demonstrate in a particular case that the minister’s claims implicate the entity’s internal government closely linked to religious doctrine?
On March 1, a three-justice panel of Division Two of the First District Court of Appeal reached the same conclusion on the scope of the ministerial exception as their Division Five colleagues on what the court called “strikingly similar” facts. In Ehrenkranz v. San Francisco Zen Center, as in Lorenzo, the court of appeal reversed summary judgment in the Zen Center’s favor.
Click here to read the full article written by SCMV Shareholder Dan Eaton and published in The San Diego Union-Tribune.