EEOC v. Mississippi College

• Decision Date: 05 May 1978
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. J78-0113(C).
• Citation: 451 F. Supp. 564
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi
• Parties: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Petitioner, v. MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE, Respondent.

451 F. Supp. 564

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Petitioner, v. MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE, Respondent.

Civ. A. No. J78-0113(C).

United States District Court, S. D. Mississippi, Jackson Division.

May 5, 1978.

Warren E. Cox, Dist. Counsel, E.E.O.C., Jackson, Miss., for plaintiff.

E. Grady Jolly, Jr., Jackson, Miss., for defendant.

WILLIAM HAROLD COX, District Judge.

This case involves a controversy within the Equal Employment Opportunity provisions of the Civil Rights Act. The charging party is Dr. Patricia A. Sumners who contends that she was not employed in the Psychology Department of the college because she is a female. There is nothing before the Court in anywise involving any race question. The charging party and her husband have been employed as professors at Mississippi College. Dr. Sumners was baptized in the Baptist Church at Iuka, Mississippi when she was about ten years old and has remained in the church until around 1970 when she joined the Presbyterian Church to be with her husband in her church affiliation. She sought full time employment when there was an opening, but that job was awarded to a male professor of the Baptist faith.

Mississippi College is owned, controlled and operated by the Mississippi Baptist Convention as a part of its Christian Mission Program. This proceeding is basically and essentially to enforce a subpoena duces tecum ad testificandum. The petitioner contends and insists that it is simply investigating the facts to see whether or not the respondent is actually covered by the act or not. The Congress has no power, no authority to make any law in anywise affecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.¹

With such restriction, the Congress enacted and the President signed into law that section of the Code which makes it clear that the Chapter has no application to a female in the employ of Mississippi College.²

Under such circumstances, the petitioner has asserted that the respondent failed to hire Dr. Sumners solely because of the fact that she is a female. That contention is not denied, but the college contends that it is a privately owned and operated religious institution and that its decision may not be inquired into or changed by any disagreement with such conclusions; and least of all that the petitioner simply has no statutory authority to issue a subpoena and to require conformity thereto under any guise or pretext. Ninety-six percent of the full time members of the college faculty are Baptists. Eighty-eight percent of the students are Baptists. Two courses in Bible and chapel meetings twice a week are required of all students. There is no female minister in any Baptist church in the entire Mississippi Baptist Convention. Mississippi College did not hire a woman to teach Bible courses. Those overriding convictions may or may not find universal support among the Baptist faith, but this petitioner is not given any power or any authority even to seek evidence to establish such facts in seeking to determine whether or not it has jurisdiction of this case. Extensive evidence was taken by the Court Reporter and is before the Court and has been examined and considered, and this Court is of the opinion that the petitioner does not have jurisdiction even to maintain its investigation. This is by no means controlled, or even influenced by the decision of New Orleans Public Service, Inc. v. William H. Brown, III, (5 C.A.) 507 F.2d 160 which dealt with an employer who was clearly covered by and amenable to the act.

The State of Rhode Island had adopted a statute under which the state paid directly to teachers in non-public elementary schools a supplement of 15% of their annual salary. Under the state statute, the records of the religious schools had to be examined in order to assess how much of the expenditures were attributable to secular education and how much to religious activity. This statute was ruled unconstitutional.³

Another pertinent case which involved the National Labor Relations Board and certain Catholic parochial schools, the board sought to establish a collective bargaining relationship between the teachers and the school. The Court said that the First Amendment had interposed itself to prevent such relationship. The board sought to engage in factual inquiry into such matters which would necessarily raise First Amendment problems. The board attempted to assess the degree of religious activity...