INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) - The Catholic Church can’t avoid a lawsuit by a gay teacher who was fired after the archbishop enforced a strict “morals clause” on his school, an Indiana appeals court ruled, reversing a trial judge’s dismissal of the case on First Amendment grounds.
Joshua Payne-Elliott was a social studies teacher at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis for more than a decade when he married another man, also a teacher at a Catholic school, in 2017. Two years later Cathedral’s president, Robert Bridges, told Payne-Elliott the school had to “adopt and enforce morals clause language used in teacher contracts” to retain its status as a Catholic school. The school where Payne-Elliott’s spouse worked refused to fire him, but in June 2019 Cathedral refused to renew Payne-Elliott’s contract and less than a month later, he sued.
The church failed to have the case dismissed in the first round of litigation but won after the trial judge recused himself and a new one dismissed the case with prejudice for failure to state a claim. The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed in a Nov. 23 decision, however, ruling that the second judge improperly granted summary dismissal instead of utilizing the more stringent summary judgment standard.
From the beginning, the archdiocese argued the church was protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion and Payne-Elliott had failed to claim his contract was ended “without justification.”
The first judge, Stephen Heimann, rejected this argument, saying the plaintiff could prove the archdiocese’s action wasn’t justified. The archdiocese requested reconsideration, including a letter from Father Joseph L. Newton, a canon law expert, explaining that the archbishop was “the highest ecclesiastical authority” on the question. Judge Heimann didn’t respond.
The archdiocese sought review by the Indiana Supreme Court, which refused, but in the meantime Judge Heimann recused himself and was replaced by Judge Lance Hammer. In May 2021, the new judge reversed course and granted dismissal for failure to state a claim.
On appeal, Payne-Elliott argued his case shouldn’t have been dismissed because he didn’t raise questions about “internal church governance, require the courts to resolve an ecclesiastical controversy, or otherwise excessively entangle the courts with religion.” The archdiocese responded that it acted in accordance with canon law, which lay courts can’t question.
In a similar case, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed dismissal that had been upheld by the Court of Appeals, ruling that state courts don’t necessarily lose jurisdiction to hear employment suits because of a religious defense. Defendants that plead the First Amendment instead can obtain summary judgment.
Summary judgment, in turn, requires a “fact-sensitive and claim specific” inquiry that the trial court did not conduct in this case, the appeals court ruled. “Genuine issues of material fact” may include whether the plaintiff’s job duties made him a “minister” and whether the First Amendment applies.
What is certain, the appeals court concluded, is that the trial court “was cloaked with general authority to hear matters involving employment contracts and disputes and erred in concluding otherwise.”
The lower court also erred by dismissing his case for failure to state a claim because Payne-Elliott stated sufficient facts under Indiana’s notice pleading system to support a lawsuit. Finally, the court erred by dismissing his claim “with prejudice,” or so that it couldn’t be filed again, because that option isn’t available when cases are dismissed for failure to state a claim, the appeals court said.