Hutchison v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 28 April 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-3051,85-3051
• Citation: 789 F.2d 392
• Parties: The Rev. O. Lloyd HUTCHISON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The Rev. James S. THOMAS; The Rev. Merlin D. Vining; The Rev. Thomas L. Cromwell; The Rev. Richard L. Burns and the East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church; The Board of Ordained Ministry of the East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church, and The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 392

789 F.2d 392

The Rev. O. Lloyd HUTCHISON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The Rev. James S. THOMAS; The Rev. Merlin D. Vining; The

Rev. Thomas L. Cromwell; The Rev. Richard L. Burns and the

East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church; The

Board of Ordained Ministry of the East Ohio Conference of

the United Methodist Church, and The Judicial Council of the

United Methodist Church, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 85-3051.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued Feb. 24, 1986.

Decided April 28, 1986.

Gerald P. Leb (argued), Arthur S. Leb, Amerman, Burt, & Jones Co., Canton, Ohio, for plaintiff-appellant.

Rex W. Miller, Douglas N. Godshall, Ellen Loth, Canton, Ohio, Samuel W. Witwer (argued), Witwer, Moran, Burlage, & Witwer, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before JONES and WELLFORD, Circuit Judges and GILMORE, District Judge ^*.

GILMORE, District Judge.

This is an action brought by appellant, an ordained Methodist minister, challenging his enforced retirement under Church disciplinary rules. The defendants are a Bishop of the Methodist Church and three of his subordinates, the Judicial Council of the Church, as well as the East Ohio Conference of the Church and the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Conference. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. We affirm.

In his original complaint, appellant raised a number of grievances against defendants including contentions that defendants had improperly applied provisions of The Discipline of the United Methodist Church (hereinafter "The Discipline" ), governing the appointment and placement of ministers, and that defendants had misled and misguided various units of the denomination in bringing about his early retirement. He further alleged that defendants were guilty of "fraudulent or collusive or arbitrary" action, as well as defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and breach of contract.

On December 5, 1984, appellant filed a proposed amended complaint that added his wife, claimed loss of consortium on her part, and expanded considerably on his earlier claims.

Prior to the filing of this amended complaint, extensive argument on a motion to dismiss had been heard. On December 11, 1984 the district court filed its opinion granting the motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Court additionally dismissed the complaint for noncompliance with the mandatory requirements of Rules 8(a), 9(b) and 10(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Appellant's basic claim is that the United Methodist Church wrongfully expelled him from his ministry in the defendant East Ohio Conference by fraudulent or collusive or arbitrary application of the rules, laws and doctrinal statements known as The Discipline. Appellant was forced to retire due to his alleged inability to work with congregations and get along with members. He had been transferred several times. Several hearings were conducted concerning his ability to relate properly to his congregations. After a final determination by the Church's highest tribunal, the Judicial Council, he was placed on involuntary retirement. He alleges that throughout these proceedings the Bishop and other parties misrepresented his relationships at various churches, and through this misrepresentation brought about his enforced retirement.

The crux of appellant's fraud claim is as follows:

The individual Defendants acted to have Plaintiff declared "unappointable." ... The essence of Plaintiff's claim is that this false characterization of his ministry was carried out through fraud and misrepresentation, and by withholding from the general bodies concerned (the Board of Ordained Ministry, the Annual Conference of the East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church, and the Judicial Conference of the United Methodist Church) the true facts surrounding the events of the Plaintiff's ministry.

Appellant's brief p. 7.

Appellant is really seeking civil court review of subjective judgments made by religious officials and bodies that he had become "unappointable" due to recurring problems in his relationships with local congregations. This Court cannot constitutionally intervene in such a dispute.

The Supreme Court of the United States has steadfastly upheld the First Amendment's command that secular authorities may not interfere with the internal ecclesiastical workings and disciplines of religious bodies, although there may be occasions when civil courts can resolve disputes over the disposition and use of church property.

As the Supreme Court of the United States pointed out as early as 1871 in Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 679, 20 L.Ed. 666:

... [W]e think the rule of action which should govern the civil courts, founded in a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state under our system of laws, and supported by a preponderating weight of judicial authority is, that, whenever the questions of discipline, or of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding on them, in their application to the case before them.

Id. at 727.

Further, the Court said In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if anyone aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for.

Nor do we see that justice would be likely to be promoted by submitting those decisions to review in the ordinary judicial tribunals ...

Id. 728-29.

This doctrine was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Serbian Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976):

In short, the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit hierarchical religious organizations to establish their own rules and regulations for internal discipline and government, and to create tribunals for adjudicating disputes over these matters. When this choice is exercised and ecclesiastical tribunals are created to decide disputes over the government and direction of subordinate bodies, the Constitution requires that civil courts accept their decisions as binding upon them.

Id. at 724-25, 96 S.Ct. at 2387-88.

Simpson v. Wells Lamont Corporation, 494 F.2d 490 (5th Cir.1974) is similar to the instant case. There an expelled United Methodist minister sought damages and other relief against his bishop and denominational officials. The Fifth Circuit dismissed the action in a strongly worded opinion:

This case involves the fundamental question of who will preach from the pulpit of a church, and who will occupy the church parsonage. The bare statement of the question should make obvious the lack of jurisdiction of a civil court. The answer to that question must come from the church.

Id. at 492.

Quoting, with approval, from the district court opinion, the court said:

"[N]o matter how one may look at this dispute, it had to do with the substance and content of the very words uttered within the church itself, going right to the heart of the doctrine and beliefs and types of sermons that are delivered in churches. Now, the church is a sanctuary, if one exists anywhere, immune from the rule or subjection to the authority of the civil courts, either state or federal, by virtue of the First Amendment."

Id. 492-93.

Appellant, however, relies on dictum in Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop, 280 U.S. 1, 50 S.Ct. 5, 74 L.Ed. 131 (1929), to support his argument that there exists an exception to this general rule of deference where cases involve "fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness," and that this case falls within that exception. There, the Court said:

In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.

Id. at 16, 50 S.Ct. at 7.

The Court dealt with this language in Milivojevich, supra, saying:

Gonzalez first adverted to the possibility of "marginal civil court review," ... in cases challenging decisions of ecclesiastical tribunals as products of "fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness." However, since there was "not even a suggestion that [the Archbishop] exercised his authority [in making the chaplaincy decision] arbitrarily," 280 U.S., at 18, 50...