In re St. Thomas High School is a nasty, unfortunate dispute between a Catholic high school in Texas and the parents of a now-former student at that high school. It is also, however, the sort of ordinary disagreement that routinely arises between parties to a contract.
Nevertheless, a Texas appeals court held on Thursday that the school enjoys broad constitutional immunity from its obligation to obey its own contracts because of the school’s status as a “religious institution.” That’s a decision the school — and many other religious institutions — could come to regret in the long run.
The facts of the case reveal a heated and deeply personal dispute between a student’s parents and the school. The parents reportedly asked a teacher to call them on a particular night to discuss an ongoing dispute over a grade, but the teacher did not do so because, as he later allegedly told the student, that evening was his wedding anniversary and he spent it preparing a “romantic” night.
In response, the parents accused the teacher of sexual harassment — labeling the teacher’s explanation for why he did not call “inadequate, irrelevant” and “sexually demeaning.” After an investigation, the school expelled the student, citing a provision in their own handbook which permits such an expulsion due to “actions by a parent/guardian or other person responsible for the student which upbraids, insults, threatens or abuses any teacher, administrator, coach or staff member of the school.”
Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a fairly simple, if ugly, contract case. The parents argued that the school breached its contract with them when it refused to educate their son. The school would argue that the student handbook constitutes part of that contract, and it permitted an expulsion under these circumstances. The case would be decided based on how a court understood the agreement between the parents and the school.
But St. Thomas decided to make this into a constitutional case instead. They argued that the “ecclesiastical abstention doctrine,” a doctrine arising under the First Amendment that limits the courts’ ability to decide cases involving a religious body’s “doctrines, membership, discipline, and internal affairs” prevents the courts from even hearing this dispute in the first place. And, in its Thursday opinion, a Texas appeals court agreed.
By choosing instead to convert this into a constitutional dispute, the school chose to undermine its ability to be trusted in the marketplace
The court acknowledges that this doctrine is not supposed to be all-encompassing. “Because churches, their congregations, and their hierarchies exist and function within the civil community, they are amenable to rules governing civil, contract, and property rights in appropriate circumstances,” the court explains.
If a court tried to question a church’s interpretation of the Bible, for example, or who it promoted to leadership positions within the clergy, or its decision to deny communion to a member, that would run afoul of this First Amendment doctrine. But if the church contracted with a plumber to fix a broken toilet, and then refused to pay the bill after the job was complete, then the plumber should be allowed to sue the church just like it would sue any other customer who breaches a contract. Fixing toilets is an entirely secular activity.
The St. Thomas case is somewhere between these two examples. As the Texas court explains, the school contracted with the parents to provide education that has a “spiritual” element. Additionally, there is at least one other case in Texas permitting a religious school to invoke the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine when it did not wish to admit a student. That case likened a court trying to require a school to accept a student to the same court requiring a church to accept a member.
At the same time, however, St. Thomas admits both Catholics and non-Catholics, so the analogy between the school’s students and a church’s membership is imperfect. The dispute between the school and the parents was also secular, not spiritual, in nature. The school claimed that “because of the highly-charged, slanderous accusations of sexual harassment against [the teacher], it would be difficult if not impossible for any St. Thomas teacher to be able to teach [the student] without fear of similar retribution by [the parents].”
And, most importantly, this is a contract dispute, not a case of an overbearing government agency trying to force a Catholic school to admit an unwanted student. The student in this particular case attended St. Thomas because the school agreed to educate him under the terms established by the school’s handbook. Now, however, the school says that it should not be judged according to whether it held up its end of this bargain.
As a matter of constitutional law, St. Thomas makes an entirely plausible case, and the Texas court cites similar cases where other courts have reached similar results. But an unasked question in this litigation is, why, exactly, a religious school would want to lose its ability to be bound by contracts.
This point may seem counter-initiative, but the ability to enter into lawful contracts that can be enforced against you if you breach them is one of the most important privileges provided by American courts. No plumber is going to agree to do business with a customer who can refuse to pay their bill. Similarly, if word gets out that St. Thomas will not honor the obligations that it has voluntarily agreed to, then parents will be reluctant to send their children to this school and other vendors will be reluctant to do business with it.
The irony of the St. Thomas case is that the school probably would have a strong argument on its side if it simply treated this case as an ordinary contract dispute. The school handbook’s language dealing with “uncooperative, defiant or disruptive” parents is fairly broad, and may very well encompass the actions of the parents in this case.
By choosing instead to convert this into a constitutional dispute, the school chose to undermine its ability to be trusted in the marketplace — as well as the ability of other religious institutions that could obtain similar decisions from a court to also be trusted. That’s a high price to pay in order to expel one student.