EQUAL EMPLOYMENT, ETC. v. SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST

• Decision Date: 18 January 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. CA 4-77-141-E.
• Citation: 485 F. Supp. 255
• Parties: EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION v. SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

485 F. Supp. 255

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION v. SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

Civ. A. No. CA 4-77-141-E.

United States District Court, N. D. Texas, Fort Worth Division.

January 18, 1980.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Abner W. Sibal, William L. Robinson, David W. Zugschwerdt, Charles David Nelson, Terrence Willingham, E. E. O. C., Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

Jenkins Garrett, Steve M. King, Garrett & Stahala, Frank D. McCown, Fort Worth, Tex., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MAHON, District Judge.

This action is brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") to establish jurisdiction over the defendant Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary ("Seminary") under § 709(c) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.; and specifically, to compel the Seminary to submit the Higher Education Staff Information Report ("EEO-6"). 29 C.F.R. § 1602. The Seminary admits that it is covered under the jurisdictional language of § 709(c) and the literal wording of EEOC regulations pertaining to educational institutions. 29 C.F.R. § 1602.47. However, the Seminary has refused to submit form EEO-6 for the years 1975 and 1977 contending that it is protected from enforcement of Title VII by the religious clauses of the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Plaintiff denies that Title VII infringes on any first amendment rights and asserts further that the Seminary has submitted to the virtually identical enforcement procedures of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., in seeking and maintaining its status as an approved program of education for veterans receiving educational benefits and has thereby waived its free exercise objections, if any, to enforcement of Title VII.

I. Free Exercise

The Southern Baptist Convention (the "Convention") is a voluntary association of Southern Baptist churches composed of representatives ("messengers") elected by cooperating churches. The convention is incorporated in the State of Georgia "for the purpose of eliciting, combining and directing the energies of the Baptist denomination of Christians for the propagation of the gospel." Defendant Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (the "Seminary") is an agency of the Convention located in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, and is organized as a Texas non-profit corporation for the specific purpose of training ministers for the Southern Baptist churches and missions.

The Seminary is exempt from income taxes and as an integrated auxiliary of an association of churches is not required to file the Form 990 information return. Sixty percent of the Seminary's funding comes from the Convention's missionary fund, 20% from endowment, 20% from private contributions and student charges. In addition to its strictly educational facilities, the Seminary operates a cafeteria, a printshop, a bookstore and some off-campus student housing. These are conducted under various financial arrangements as student and/or administrative services and not as profit-making ventures.

Approximately 1,450 theological candidates, most of whom have other secular degrees, are enrolled in the Seminary pursuing degrees exclusively in theology, religious education, and church music. The Seminary's bylaws flatly prohibit the expansion of curriculum to provide strictly secular education. Enrollment is not open to the public or to Baptists in general but is limited to persons who have experienced a "divine call" to a specific role in the ministry or the church. Certain academic standards are imposed, but these are considered subordinate to moral and spiritual qualifications. A prospective student must persuade the Seminary not only of his own personal spiritual experience and commitment to a full-time Christian vocation but, if married, of his spouse's commitment as well. The local church must verify the student's, or couple's, divine call, character, and other qualifications.

Fulfillment of the academic requirements of a degree program does not automatically entitle the theological candidate to award of a degree. The faculty reserves the right to withhold a degree based on moral or spiritual deficiencies, and has exercised this right in the past. Upon graduation, the students are left to their own efforts, aided by divine providence, in locating the particular position of service they will occupy. The Seminary does not operate a placement service or an employment office to aid its graduates. Information is merely supplied to churches that request it.

It cannot be overemphasized that the Seminary views a pervasively religious environment as essential to the cultivation of the distinct attitudes and qualities of Baptist ministers and that this view dictates its employment practices as a whole. Employees are not merely hired to perform a task, but must from first to last be willing members of the ecclesia. Religious exercise is a virtual condition of employment. Brief devotional services open all staff meetings, and chapel services which employees as well as students are expected to attend are conducted each school day, Tuesday through Friday. The Seminary's employment practices are designed to create an integrated, homogeneous community exemplifying the mores and dogma of the Baptist faith and the quality of religious life achieved by its strictest application. Since all employees, whatever their position, are expected to contribute to a unified religious endeavor and maintain a commitment to spiritual life, religious discipline extends far into their personal lives, not merely to avoid the embarrassment of a notorious lifestyle, but to immerse the students in an atmosphere of intense piety and to provide a model of religious practice to the outside world.¹

The significance of faculty and administrators in this scheme cannot be doubted. "The ministry" of the Baptist church spans a range of religious vocations which may be characterized as full-time Christian service in response to a divine call and includes lay leaders as well as ordained ministers. Lay leaders may "serve a ministry" as directors of religious education, or music directors of a local church, or as professionals attached to a foreign mission. Members of the faculty and administration of a seminary are considered ministers and are hired, assigned, advanced, tenured, evaluated and terminated on predominately religious criteria. Personal characteristics that evince dedication to Baptist ideals and faithful participation in the activities of the church of which the employee is a member carry equal or greater weight than academic qualifications or scholarship. Recruitment of faculty and administrators is viewed as a divinely guided "spiritual quest" mutually pursued by the Seminary and the prospective employee. No employment agencies, search organizations, or newspaper ads are utilized in seeking faculty or administrators. Membership in the Baptist church is a prerequisite to employment.

Support personnel likewise perform a bona fide religious and educational function. The Seminary hires students, students' spouses and faculty spouses in preference to outsiders. These employees comprise the great majority of the Seminary's support personnel and all of its part-time employees. This practice extends financial assistance to the students and helps to draw the students, the faculty and their families into a religious community.

Full-time, career support personnel have considerable contact with students and their families as supervisors and as providers of student services. Unlike faculty and administrators, they are not ministers in the formal sense by virtue of their employment at the Seminary. However, they are encouraged and expected to view their work as fulfillment of a religious calling. A significant number of them have theological degrees or have performed other full-time missionary work. Although membership in the Baptist Church is not a formal requirement for employment as support personnel, these employees must display an appreciation and enthusiasm for the evangelical principles of the Seminary as a Baptist institution. In the judgment of Dr. Russell Dilday, Jr., President of the Seminary, only a person from a very similar fundamentalist background could have acquired the sympathetic understanding to make them compatible with "the Seminary family." No degree of skill or expertise could override the conviction that a person occupying a support position evinced an attitude inconsistent with the ideals and religious responsibilities of the institution.

The issues presented in this case cannot be resolved by balancing the compelling interests of the state against the sanctity of irreconcilable religious belief, as in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940). Although the Seminary recognizes certain doctrines that could require discrimination on the basis of sex in some faculty and administrative positions at some remote future date, its representatives deny the existence of any tenet of the Baptist faith that would require or justify discrimination solely on the basis of race or national origin as a matter of religious conviction. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Seminary intends to select and advance employees of every category on criteria that go beyond church affiliation and possession of basic training and skills. The Seminary regards its employment decisions as divinely guided assessments of each employee's suitability for the position he will occupy in relation to the students and as a representative of the institution, and seeks to assert its right to make these intensely subjective decisions without government supervision. The case presents a pure question of entanglement that cannot be obviated by statutory construction in the manner of NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 59 L.Ed.2d 533 (1979),...