State Supreme Court weighs religious immunity in sexual abuse suit

By Scott Lauck
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
ST. LOUIS, MO — Twenty-three years ago, the Missouri Supreme Court said courts cannot peer into the hiring and firing practices of religious organizations. On May 6, the court was asked if that ruling remains valid.

The court heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by a 1971 graduate of Chaminade College Preparatory School who alleges he was sexually abused by a school counselor. The plaintiff, referred to as John Doe 122 in court records, alleges he didn’t recall the abuse until he received a letter in 2012 from the Marianist Province of the United States informing him of an allegation of sexual abuse against John Woulfe, a now-deceased Marianist brother employed by Chaminade as a guidance counselor.

Doe’s suit, filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court in 2015, named the Marianist Province and the St. Louis-area school, alleging among other counts negligent supervision and failure to supervise clergy.

The circuit court granted summary judgment to the defendants. Late last year, a split panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District affirmed that ruling but agreed to transfer the case to the Supreme Court for a final decision.

The case hinges on the Missouri Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling in Gibson v. Brewer, which held that under the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, courts cannot hear claims against religious organizations that would require them to determine “questions of religious doctrine, polity, and practice.”

Chief Justice George W. Draper III brought up that precedent almost immediately.

“Hasn’t [Gibson] already set the parameters for suits against religious institutions?” he asked.

Ken Chackes, a St. Louis-based attorney representing Doe, told the court the case was wrongly decided.

“I’m here to challenge that ruling,” he said. He argued that, as a youth-serving organization, the school wasn’t immune to laws that protect students.

“Even if we assume that religious beliefs are involved in the supervision of employees or children, where it’s clear that the laws are neutral and generally applicable and have a rational basis, it does not violate the U.S. Constitution,” Chackes argued.

However, Alexandra Haar of HeplerBroom, an attorney for the defendants, argued that the First Amendment gave the church a “categorical protection” to its autonomy.

“The hiring, firing and discipline of clergy and ministers remains an ecclesiastical question,” she said. “This is within the confines of a religious organization.”

Among the issues in the case is whether Missouri’s Gibson case conflicts with U.S. Supreme Court precedent — and if so, which one. Chackes argued that the Missouri case was counter to Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 ruling in which the high court said the state of Oregon could deny benefits to members of the Native American Church who had used peyote, even though the illegal drug was used in religious rituals.

But Haar said the plaintiff hadn’t “come to grips” with a 2012 case that distinguished Smith. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School. v. E.E.O.C., the Supreme Court said there was a “ministerial exception” to employment laws, barring a minister-teacher from bringing a discrimination and retaliation case against a church.