Opinion
HHDCV166067714S
04-03-2017
Thedress Campbell v. Shiloh Baptist Church et al
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE REQUEST FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
CESAR A. NOBLE, J.
This matter came before the court on March 28, 2017, for the completion of an evidentiary hearing on the request of the plaintiff, Thedress Campbell, that the court enjoin temporarily the defendant, Shiloh Baptist Church (Church), from dismissing him from its membership and privileges. An initial hearing was held on July 21, 2016, at which the court questioned its authority to consider the plaintiff's request in light of to the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine derived from the freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment to the United States constitution. Following briefing and argument the court issued a written decision on this issue. Campbell v. Shiloh Baptist Church, Superior Court, judicial district of Hartford, Docket No. CV-16-6067714-S, (December 1, 2016, Noble, J.) (63 Conn.L.Rptr. 526, ). Familiarity with the findings of facts and law contained therein is presumed. The court resolved the question of its authority to consider the issue of the plaintiff's purported expulsion in favor of a narrow inquiry as to whether the expulsion was " the act of an authority within the Church having the power to order it." After careful consideration of all the exhibits admitted to date, including an audio recording of a meeting of the Church's Board of Deacons and a video recording of a later meeting of the congregation, the court answers the question in the affirmative. Accordingly the plaintiff's injunctive relief is denied.
The parties' briefing referenced only the federal constitution. Because the defendants have not claimed the Connecticut constitution affords them greater protection from governmental action; see generally State v. Geisler, 222 Conn. 672, 684-85, 610 A.2d 1225 (1992); this court's analysis of the limitations on its authority is restricted to the first amendment to the United States constitution. State v. Rizzo, 266 Conn. 171, 243 n. 40, 833 A.2d 363 (2003). The plaintiff's original complaint referenced violations the plaintiff's freedom of religion provided by both the United States and Connecticut constitutions. The plaintiff amended his complaint on January 13, 2017, and omitted any reference to either constitution. Rather, the complaint simply asserts that the actions of the Church, Porter and the various boards " ultra vires."
The operative complaint is the January 13, 2017 amended complaint. The only count of the complaint presently at issue is the first which alleges that the purported dismissal of the plaintiff from membership was ultra vires. It is this count which serves as the basis for the plaintiff's claim for injunctive relief.
The following additional facts are found by the court. At the March 28, 2017 hearing, the Church conceded that the purported dismissal of the plaintiff communicated to him by letter dated February 2, 2016, was not an act expressly within the authority of its authors, Maurice Porter and Bradley Jones, respectively Pastor and Chairman of the Deacons of the Church. A hearing and meeting of the Board of Deacons (Board meeting) was held on January 27, 2017, at which Porter and the Deacons of the Church voted to recommend to the Advisory Board of the Church that the plaintiff should be dismissed. Thereafter the Advisory Board recommended that the congregation consider the dismissal of the plaintiff. The congregation met to consider the plaintiff's dismissal at a meeting held on March 25, 2017 (Membership meeting), which was attended by sixty-one members. Forty-seven members, more than two-thirds of those attending, voted in favor of the plaintiff's dismissal. The court finds that this vote was a valid expression of the corporate body of the Church.
The ecclesiastical abstention doctrine was first articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 679, 20 L.Ed. 666 (1871). The doctrine precludes secular courts from judging the propriety of decisions of religious tribunals on issues of religious dogma, ecclesiastical law, church discipline, or church governance. See Thibodeau v. American Baptist Churches of Connecticut, 120 Conn.App. 666, 672, 994 A.2d 212, cert. denied, 298 Conn. 901, 3 A.3d 74 (2010). The expulsion or dismissal of a congregant from membership is a quintessential act of church discipline and governance generally not subject to secular review by the courts. " It may be conceded that we have no power to revise or question ordinary acts of church discipline, or of excision from membership." Bouldin v. Alexander, 82 U.S. (15 Wall.) 131, 139, 21 L.Ed. 69 (1872). As stated in this court's earlier decision, however, a court may inquire whether the act of expulsion was in fact the act of the religious organization. Campbell v. Shiloh Baptist Church, supra, 63 Conn.L.Rptr. 531, . The court, having made the determination that the vote of the membership on March 25, 2017, to dismiss the plaintiff was in fact the valid expression of the Church, is shorn of any authority to inquire further.
The plaintiff disagrees and points to claimed procedural irregularities and inequities related to the membership vote. These include but are not limited to the fact that only the topic of the plaintiff's reconciliation with the Church, and not his dismissal, was discussed with the plaintiff when he was present at the Board meeting; lack of notice regarding the Advisory Board meeting; insufficiency of notices to him for several membership meetings that were ultimately cancelled; the failure to identify in its announcement his dismissal as the purpose of the Membership meeting; and the insufficiency of the time allotted to him to address the congregation at the Membership meeting. In the view of the plaintiff, these constituted either explicit violations of the Constitution and Bylaws or acts of capriciousness sufficient for this court to invalidate his dismissal. The plaintiff misapprehends the scope of the court's authority.
The United State Supreme Court's decision in Bouldin articulated the boundary of the court's authority. " [W]e cannot decide who ought to be members of the church, nor whether the excommunicated have been regularly or irregularly cut off . We must take the fact of excommunication as conclusive proof that the persons exscinded are not members. But we may inquire whether the resolution of expulsion was the act of the church, or of persons who were not the church and who consequently had no right to excommunicate others." (Emphasis added.) Bouldin v. Alexander, supra, 82 U.S. (15 Wall.) 139-40. In Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for United States of America & Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976), the United State Supreme Court rejected as contrary to first amendment principles the abrogation by the Illinois Supreme Court of the decision of a religious tribunal on the grounds that the relevant proceedings were not conducted according to the Illinois Supreme Court's interpretation of the church's constitution and penal code regarding the prescribed procedure. Id., 718. The court held that it could not under the first amendment consider the propriety or impropriety of a defrocked bishop's procedural claims. Id., 719. Similarly, our own Supreme Court has rejected, in the context of the ministerial exception, the policing of a religious organization's compliance with its internal procedures as repugnant to the first amendment. See Dayner v. Archdiocese of Hartford, 301 Conn. 759, 774, 786, 23 A.3d 1192 (2011) (applying ministerial exception to bar suit by former ministerial employee against church). Accordingly, this court may not, and does not, conduct the type of inquiry that the plaintiff asks it to undertake.
The phrase " ministerial exception" refers to the first amendment freedom from governmental, including judicial, intervention or review of a religious organization to select or terminate its ministers. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 565 U.S. 171, 188, 132 S.Ct. 694, 181 L.Ed.2d 650 (2012).
Lastly, the plaintiff asks the court to consider irrelevant the Church's intervening actions since the date of the first hearing. Of note is the fact that the only factual allegations in the complaint relate to the purported dismissal of the plaintiff as communicated in the February 2, 2016 letter. See Campbell v. Shiloh Baptist Church, supra, 63 Conn.L.Rptr. 527, . None of the more recent events leading to the dismissal of the plaintiff by the membership at the March 25, 2017 meeting are referenced in the complaint. In the view of the plaintiff, the action of the congregation on March 25 is of no moment to the injunctive relief requested because the prior attempt at expulsion by Porter and Jones was an ultra vires act. The court is not persuaded.
An ineffective prior attempt at expulsion by Porter and Jones does not implicate the plaintiff's current membership status and thus his right to injunctive relief. To the contrary, the Church's March 25, 2017 authoritative dismissal of the plaintiff from membership renders his prior claims moot. " A case becomes moot when due to intervening circumstances a controversy between the parties no longer exists . . . An issue is moot when the court can no longer grant any practical relief." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Burton v. Comm'r of Envtl. Prot., 323 Conn. 668, 677, 150 A.3d 666 (2016). " Connecticut courts have rejected injunctive remedies on the ground of mootness where the issue before the court has been resolved or has lost its significance because of intervening circumstances. See Waterbury Hospital v. Connecticut Health Care Associates, 186 Conn. 247, 249-52, 440 A.2d 310 (1982) (court dismissed as moot plaintiff's request for injunctive relief to restrain picketing during strike because strike and picketing had ended while appeal was pending); Daley v. Gaitor, 16 Conn.App. 379, 381 n. 2, 547 A.2d 1375 (court dismissed as moot plaintiff's request to enjoin city of Hartford from administering promotional examination to police officers following city's promotion of officers during pendency of appeal), cert. denied, 209 Conn. 824, 552 A.2d 430 (1988)." Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone v. Rocque, 267 Conn. 116, 126, 836 A.2d 414 (2003) (appeal of denial of injunctive relief requesting rejection of environmental permit transfer request dismissed as moot where commissioner of environmental protection granted transfer after denial of temporary injunction). The plaintiff's request for injunctive relief prohibiting the defendants from preventing the privileges of Church membership is moot because of its subsequent authoritative dismissal of the plaintiff. For the foregoing reasons the plaintiff's request for temporary injunctive relief is denied, and the court dismisses as moot his request for permanent injunctive relief.
At the first hearing the court raised sua sponte the issue of whether it was deprived--by the first amendment's ecclesiastical abstention doctrine--of subject matter jurisdiction to provide the injunctive relief requested. Neither party has addressed whether the doctrine serves as a jurisdictional bar or an affirmative defense. Although the Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor clarified that the " ministerial exception" is an affirmative defense on the merits (referred to in Connecticut as a " special defense") to an otherwise cognizable claim rather than a jurisdictional bar; Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, supra, 565 U.S. 195 n. 4; there is no controlling precedent on this issue as to the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. See Kavanagh v. Zwilling, 997 F.Supp.2d 241, 248 n.7 (S.D.N.Y. 2014), aff'd, 578 Fed.Appx. 24 (2d Cir. 2014). In light of the court's finding that the plaintiff's claim is moot, it need not address this issue.