Kentucky Supreme Court Re-Writes Abstention Rules For Suits Involving Religious Organizations

Within the past twelve months, the Kentucky Supreme Court has issued three landmark opinions defining the abstention principles that courts should apply to lawsuits whose resolution could have an impact on the governance of religious organizations. In St. Joseph Catholic Orphan Society v. Edwards, 449 S.W.3d 727 (Ky. 2014), the court formally recognized and adopted the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. In Kirby v. Lexington Theological Seminary, 426 S.W.3d 597 (Ky. 2014), and its companion case, Kant v. Lexington Theological Seminary, 426 S.W.3d 587 (Ky. 2014), the court adopted and defined the parameters of the ministerial exception, which applies broader abstention principles within the specific context of the employer-employee relationship. Taken together, these three decisions represent a judicial effort to modernize this corner of legal doctrine within a remarkably narrow span of time.

First Amendment Foundations

Religious autonomy principles have long been recognized as necessary for ensuring the judiciary's adherence to the First Amendment's command that government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The United States Supreme Court has noted that the First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses mandate "a spirit of freedom for religious organizations, an independence from secular control or manipulation—in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference—matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine." Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in N. Am., 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952).

In Kirby, the Kentucky Supreme Court explained that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine "is primarily interested in preventing any chilling effect on church practices as a result of government intrusion in the form of secular courts." To avoid that chilling effect, courts should decline to exercise jurisdiction when the resolution of a dispute would require the judge to consider a "question of doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical law, or rule, or church government." The court's decisions in Kirby, Kant and St. Joseph suggest that religious autonomy principles may require judicial abstention even in disputes that appear, at first blush, to be susceptible to judicial resolution on the basis of "neutral" (i.e., non-religious) principles.

The Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine

In St. Joseph, the Kentucky Supreme Court formally recognized and adopted the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine (also known as the religious autonomy doctrine), which requires courts to abstain from deciding any dispute that would require a judge to choose who should lead a church, synagogue or mosque, or to mandate how such entities should be governed. This rule applies with equal force to religiously-affiliated organizations that are not houses of worship, such as hospitals, children's homes, and educational institutions.

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