US Dept. of Labor v. Shenandoah Baptist Church

• Decision Date: 07 February 1989
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 78-0115-R.
• Citation: 707 F. Supp. 1450
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Virginia
• Parties: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR and United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Plaintiffs, v. SHENANDOAH BAPTIST CHURCH, a religious association operating as Roanoke Valley Christian School, Defendant, and Carol C. Anderson, Lola D. Clifton, Loretta B. Dillon, Dorothy M. Dixon, Alma S. Greene, Delilah F. Gross, Margaret Harvey, Mary Ann Herndon, Jeffrey P. Kessler, John T. Kessler, Shirley I. Kessler, Joyce T. Martin, Eva T. Murdock, Sherry R. Padgett, Antoinette L. Parsons, Barbara C. Shelor, Donna Shelor, Mary Beth Shelor, Ann T. Shelton, Ruth Wesselink, Linda M. Womack, Intervenor-Defendants.

707 F. Supp. 1450

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR and United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Plaintiffs, v. SHENANDOAH BAPTIST CHURCH, a religious association operating as Roanoke Valley Christian School, Defendant, and Carol C. Anderson, Lola D. Clifton, Loretta B. Dillon, Dorothy M. Dixon, Alma S. Greene, Delilah F. Gross, Margaret Harvey, Mary Ann Herndon, Jeffrey P. Kessler, John T. Kessler, Shirley I. Kessler, Joyce T. Martin, Eva T. Murdock, Sherry R. Padgett, Antoinette L. Parsons, Barbara C. Shelor, Donna Shelor, Mary Beth Shelor, Ann T. Shelton, Ruth Wesselink, Linda M. Womack, Intervenor-Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 78-0115-R.

United States District Court, W.D. Virginia, Roanoke Division.

February 7, 1989.

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Marshall H. Harris, Don Stacey, Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Dept. of Labor, Philadelphia, Pa., Joan Roller, E.E.O.C., Baltimore, Md., for plaintiffs.

Donald W. Huffman, Bird, Kinder & Huffman, Roanoke, Va., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

TURK, Chief Judge.

The government has moved the court to enter judgment in its favor, and one of the two governmental plaintiffs, the United States Department of Labor, also prays for certain prospective injunctive relief, in this action against a church for asserted violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219 (1982 & Supp. IV 1986), in its operation of a school.

Defendant Shenandoah Baptist Church ("Shenandoah") is an unincorporated association that operates a preschool and an elementary and secondary school in Roanoke, Virginia, that is collectively known as Roanoke Valley Christian School ("Roanoke Valley").¹ In this action, filed in May, 1978,² the government brings minimum wage and equal pay claims based on wages and salaries Shenandoah paid school employees between 1976 and 1986. The parties stipulate that between 1976 and 1982, Shenandoah paid hourly wages that fell below the statutory minimum levels in effect at the time to a total of 91 persons who worked at Roanoke Valley in positions other than as teachers or administrators. The government contends that by this practice Shenandoah violated § 206(a), (b). The parties also stipulate that in each school year between 1976 and 1986 Shenandoah paid most of Roanoke Valley's full-time male teachers a stipulated amount greater than the salaries paid to most of its full-time female teachers. During those years, the parties stipulate, "the skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions" of the men and women who taught at the school were "substantially equal." The government contends that by paying most men more than most women Shenandoah violated 29 U.S.C. § 206(d).

This court entered partial summary judgment for the government in 1983 and held that the Act required Shenandoah to pay employees other than teachers or administrators at least the statutory minimum amount. Donovan v. Shenandoah Baptist Church, 573 F.Supp. 320 (W.D.Va.1983). In so holding, the court ruled that Shenandoah could not assert the First Amendment rights of its school employees, whose interests the court found to be "adverse" to the church's own. Id. at 325-26.

In response, 21 of the 91 present and former school employees who are the subjects of the government's minimum wage claim petitioned the court to let them intervene as defendants in the case in order to assert their First Amendment rights. The court granted the employees' motion to intervene in 1984.

The remaining issues were tried to the court sitting with a seven-member advisory jury on September 26-29, 1988. Shenandoah and the group of 21 intervening defendants were represented by separate counsel. Immediately upon conclusion of the evidence, the court entered partial judgment for the government. The court ruled that the equal pay provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d), apply to Roanoke Valley, just as the minimum wage provisions do. Based on the parties' stipulation that Shenandoah had paid 91 non-teaching school employees hourly wages less than the statutory minimum, the court also found that Shenandoah had violated the minimum wage requirement. In addition, the court ruled that requiring Roanoke Valley's non-teaching staff to receive the minimum wage would not infringe the First Amendment rights of the 21 intervening defendants.

The court then posed two special interrogatories to the advisory jury with respect to the government's equal pay claim. The jury answered the questions by finding from a preponderance of the evidence, first, "that the female school teachers employed by Shenandoah at Roanoke Valley were paid less than the male teachers who were performing equal work" and, second, that the salary differential Shenandoah used for teachers at Roanoke Valley was "not based on a factor other than sex."

Counsel for the government and for Shenandoah made oral argument to the court in January about what relief should be awarded the government. It now becomes the court's duty to "find the facts specially and state separately its conclusions of law thereon," Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a), and to enter judgment pursuant to Fed.R. Civ.P. 58.

Findings of Fact

The Reverend Robert L. Alderman, then the pastor of a Baptist church in Appomatox, Virginia, came to Roanoke in 1970 and joined others in organizing Shenandoah Baptist Church in 1971. The church is an independent Baptist church and is not affiliated with any organization of churches. The church's general membership now numbers about 1,500 persons. Its pastor, Dr. Alderman, testified that the church considers Christian education to be its "total ministry," and the court accepts this characterization of how Shenandoah's members perceive the church's mission.

To carry out its education ministry, the church conducts Sunday school classes. In addition to the church's general membership, the Sunday school has about 700 auxiliary members. In 1973, the church extended its education ministry by opening a kindergarten and primary school on its premises. By 1977, the school offered instruction through grade 12. Roanoke Valley Christian School is accredited by the Commonwealth of Virginia and by the Association of Christian Schools International. The school is operated in buildings adjacent to the church's sanctuary in Roanoke, and the church uses the buildings for other activities. Teachers at the school are employed by the church and are on its payroll. Tuition and other revenues the school receives do not cover its expenses, and church offerings make up the shortfall.

As Roanoke Valley expanded into the high school grades and required teachers for increasingly specialized subjects, Shenandoah sought teachers for the school from outside the congregation, both locally and among various Christian colleges and universities around the country. Church leaders concluded that to attract suitable teachers for more specialized subjects, the school would need to offer salaries that would allow teachers to support families. Dr. Alderman testified that church leaders looked to scripture to determine which of Roanoke Valley's teachers were heads of household, and Shenandoah began paying supplements above the base teaching salary to those teachers. The court accepts these statements.

The parties stipulate that all of the school's full-time married male teachers received the supplement between 1976 and 1986. Church leaders notified the school's teaching staff in 1977 that it had implemented the head-of-household supplement policy the previous fall. No women received the supplement until 1981. Between 1981 and 1986, the church paid the supplement to three divorced female teachers who had dependents. No other female teachers, married or single, received the bonus, nor was it paid to the one single male teacher employed full-time at the school during the period. The female teachers who did not receive the head-of-household supplement included a woman whose husband was a full-time graduate student and another who raised two children with her teaching income alone after her husband, who had become disabled and mentally ill, left the family. A third woman who was raising two children was not paid the supplement for two years while she was separated from her husband, although she did receive it after her divorce became final. The parties' stipulations indicate that if all the full-time women teachers who were not paid the supplement had been, their salaries would have been larger by a total of $177,680.

Shenandoah discontinued its head-of-household bonus at Roanoke Valley in 1986, eight years after the government filed this action, because the church's financial position had allowed it to increase teachers' base salaries so much that church leaders concluded that the base salary alone would allow teachers to support families. Base salaries, which Shenandoah supplemented in uniform fashion for prior teaching experience, rose from $5,808 in 1976-77 to $12,512 in 1985-86.³ Dr. Alderman testified that he and other church leaders have sincerely believed that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply to Roanoke Valley. The court accepts this testimony.

As mentioned above, the parties stipulate that 91 persons who worked at Roanoke Valley in positions other than as teachers or administrators received hourly wages below the statutory minimum level between 1976 and 1982. The difference between the total amount each employee would have received during the period, had he or she been paid at the statutory minimum hourly rate, and the total amount each actually received ranged from $5.64 to $807.26.⁴ The parties stipulate that together the employees received a total of $16,818.46 less than they would have at the statutory minimum rate. The 91 employees included bus drivers, custodians, bookkeepers and secretaries at Roanoke Valley, some of whom did work for Shenandoah that was unrelated to the school while they were on the payroll. Some...