In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and Sch. v. EEOC (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, for the first time, a ministerial exception under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.
It says that courts must stay out of employment disputes involving those holding certain important positions with churches and other religious institutions, if those disputes will, by their very nature, require the court to resolve a religious controversy.
In Lorenzo v. San Francisco Zen Center, the California Court of Appeal considered whether the ministerial exception bars claims under California’s minimum wage and overtime laws even though there’s no evidence that those claims would interfere “with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.” In this case, a plaintiff appealed a judgment in favor of defendants following the trial court’s order granting summary judgment against her.
Background
The San Francisco Zen Center is a nonprofit religious corporation founded in 1962 and one of the largest Sōtō Zen Buddhist churches in North America. Its primary purpose is to “encourage the practice of Zen Buddhism by operating one or more religious practice facilities and educating the public about Zen Buddhism.”
In 2015, after participating in the Center’s guest student program, the plaintiff became a Work Practice Apprentice (“WPA”) at the City Center location. During her time there, she was responsible for cleaning guest rooms, doing laundry, giving tours of the facility, and checking guests into their rooms.
In January 2016, she continued as a WPA at Tassajara where she worked in both the kitchen and bathhouse. As a member of the kitchen crew, she prepared meals and cleaned the kitchen. As a bathhouse attendant, she prepared the baths for guests, including cleaning toilets and showers, sweeping the patio walkways, and checking the temperature of the baths.
In January 2017, the plaintiff became a staff member at one of the Center’s locations. During the first part of 2017, she served as the assistant to the executive chef. In January 2018, the plaintiff was a staff member at City Center and worked as a librarian. In March 2019, the plaintiff was asked to leave and ended her affiliation with the Center. Her final monthly stipend was $198.33.
In July 2020, the plaintiff filed a claim with the Labor Commissioner for wage-and-hour violations. Her complaint alleged that she was owed regular and overtime wages, meal period premium wages, as well as liquidated damages for the work she performed at the Center. Following a hearing, the Labor Commissioner issued an order in her favor against the defendants.
As to the Center former president and the former Center director, the Commissioner held that they were individually liable under § 558.1 because they were in charge of all three facilities at some point and made decisions as to how the facilities were run. The total amount awarded against defendants was $149,177.15, which consisted of unpaid minimum wages, unpaid overtime wages, liquidated damages, interest, and waiting time penalties. The defendants appealed.
The Ministerial Exception
Judge Danny Y. Chou of the First District Court of Appeal quoted Hosanna that states, “The First Amendment provides, in part, that … ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ … Both Religion Clauses bar the government from interfering with the decision of a religious group to fire [or hire] one of its ministers.” This prohibition has been labeled “the ministerial exception.”
The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the ministerial exception in the context of a disability discrimination claim by a minister after the church fired her. The exception is derived from the church autonomy doctrine under the Religion Clauses. The doctrine recognizes the “power [of religious organizations] to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine” This includes the power “to select the clergy, where no improper methods of choice are proven…”
In Hosanna, the Supreme Court extended this reasoning to “foreclose certain employment discrimination claims brought against religious organizations.” By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions.
Judge Chou explained that not every employment claim raised by a minister is barred by the exception. Instead, the scope of the ministerial exception is limited to what is necessary to comply with the First Amendment. And barring a minister’s employment claim without any evidence that the claim would raise an ecclesiastical concern is necessary to comply with the First Amendment only if that claim will inevitably “thrust the secular courts into the constitutionally untenable position of passing judgment on questions of religious faith or doctrine.”
As such, the ministerial exception only bars employment claims that require inquiries into matters that are “strictly a matter of ecclesiastical government” such as “the authority to select, supervise, and … remove a minister.” It doesn’t bar employment claims that would have no significant impact on a church’s religious beliefs or doctrines, the Judge explained.
Application of the Ministerial Exception to the Plaintiff’s Claims
The plaintiff contended that the ministerial exception shouldn’t have been extended to bar her wage-and-hour claims because the U.S. Supreme Court has only applied the exception to bar a minister’s employment discrimination and wrongful termination claims. The plaintiff conceded that the Center is a religious organization, regardless of whether it was engaged in commercial activity. She also conceded that she was a minister for purposes of the ministerial exception. The only question then, was whether the exception barred her wage-and-hour claims despite the lack of any evidence that her claims raised an ecclesiastical concern. The Court concluded that it did not.
Although religious organizations enjoy autonomy in matters of faith and doctrine and church government, they don’t enjoy a general immunity from secular laws. The Free Exercise Clause doesn’t require an exemption from a governmental program unless, at a minimum, inclusion in the program actually burdens the claimant’s freedom to exercise religious rights.
Judge Chou and the appellate panel found that the Center didn’t point to and the Court didn’t find anything in the history of the Religion Clauses to suggest that a minister’s compensation, much less the minimum compensation that a minister should receive to subsist, was a concern of the founders. Thus, the ministerial exception doesn’t bar every employment claim for lost or unpaid wages. Instead, it only bars those claims that necessarily require an inquiry into matters of a religious entity’s “internal government” that are “closely linked” to the entity’s “faith and doctrine.”
The plaintiff’s wage-and-hour claims weren’t tied to the Center’s decision to terminate her employment and didn’t invade the Center’s autonomy in the selection of its ministers. Indeed, the plaintiff was only seeking the amount of wages for her work in furtherance of the Center’s commercial activities that the Legislature has deemed minimally necessary for her to subsist.
The Court didn’t see why the Center’s refusal to pay this subsistence wage should always be deemed a purely ecclesiastical matter and should therefore be subject to the ministerial exception. As a result, the Court of Appeals reversed the denial of the plaintiff’s motion to dismiss. Lorenzo v. San Francisco Zen Center, (California Court of Appeal, 1st Appellate District 11/21/25).
Takeaway
The Court held that the ministerial exception barred the plaintiff’s wage-and-hour claims even though defendants presented no evidence that her claims raised an ecclesiastical concern. However, without such evidence, the Religion Clauses cannot and do not bar her wage claims.
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