In the recently decided en banc Ninth Circuit case Huntsman v. Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the court held that the Church did not defraud a member by misstating the way it was financing a Church project. Judge Patrick Bumatay concurred in the result, on the ground that the church autonomy doctrine, derived from the original meaning of the establishment clause, barred the suit. From his introduction:
… In deciding religious matters, the Constitution strictly limits our authority. Simply put, the church autonomy doctrine bars federal courts from resolving matters of faith, doctrine, and church governance. So we can’t just sidestep the doctrine and jump straight to the merits. Nor can the doctrine be assumed away, considered an afterthought, or serve as a convenient alternative ruling. Rather, it’s a threshold structural bar that must be reckoned with. Otherwise, we violate the restraints the Constitution places on our power.
In this case, James Huntsman alleges that the Church committed fraud in inducing its members to tithe. He claims he only gave millions of dollars in tithes to the Church because it assured the faithful that the money donated would not be spent on a specific development project. In truth, he says, the Church used tithes to fund the development project. But resolving his claims requires swimming in a current of religious affairs. What is a “tithe”? Who can speak for the Church on the meaning of “tithes”? What are Church members’ obligations to offer “tithes”? These are questions that only ecclesiastical authorities—not federal courts—can decide.
Because Huntsman’s claims involve court interference in matters of religious truth, the church autonomy doctrine bars reaching their merits. The doctrine is born of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. “[T]he Religion Clauses protect the right of churches and other religious institutions to decide matters ‘of faith and doctrine’ without government intrusion.” Our Lady of Guadalupe Sch. v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. 732, 746 (2020) (simplified). Through the Free Exercise Clause, religious groups have the right “to shape [their] own faith and mission[.]” Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. E.E.O.C., 565 U.S. 171, 188 (2012). The Establishment Clause, on the other hand, “prohibits government involvement in . . . ecclesiastical decisions.” Id. at 189. So government interference in religious matters both “violate[s] the free exercise of religion” and “constitute[s] one of the central attributes of an establishment of religion.” Our Lady of Guadalupe, 591 U.S. at 746. In other words, the Constitution leaves matters of faith exclusively to the people and their Creator.
Together then, the Religion Clauses create a structural restraint on the government’s power to decide religious
questions. The doctrine’s structural nature is most clear through its Establishment Clause foundation. The
Establishment Clause provides that “no law” may establish religion. As an original matter, the Clause denied the federal government authority to operate in the religious sphere. That means no court can decide internal religious questions. And we are not free to ignore the doctrine. Although not strictly jurisdictional in the technical sense, the church autonomy doctrine operates as a limit on judicial authority itself. Given this limitation, the church autonomy doctrine cannot be disposed of at the court’s choosing and must be addressed as a threshold matter. So the majority errs in skirting the doctrine and reaching the merits, and the main concurrence errs in endorsing the majority’s merits ruling as a simple alternative to its church autonomy analysis.
The main part of the opinion presents extensive and comprehensive originalist analysis in support of the autonomy doctrine, in too much detail to excerpt.
Congratulations to my colleague Steven Smith for citations to and quotations from his article The Jurisdictional Establishment Clause: A Reappraisal, 81 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1843 (2006) (along with many other leading originalist scholars, including Michael McConnell, Richard Garnett, Stephanie Barclay and Vincent Phillip Munoz).
Posted at 6:07 AM