Amicus Brief: Bethesda University v. Cho

A Pentecostal university was told by a California court that it had to allow non-Pentecostal board members to lead its institution. The dispute arose when the president of Bethesda University wanted several board positions to be filled by non-Pentecostal members. When the rest of Bethesda’s leadership objected and ultimately let the president go, he filed a lawsuit, and a California trial court conducted a hearing under the Corporations Code to determine which group of board members should lead Bethesda. Bethesda’s very identity as a Pentecostal institution is at stake, because its board retains ultimate power to determine the religious principles and policies governing every aspect of its operations.

The California Court of Appeal held that a Pentecostal organization’s foundational documents must permit non-Pentecostals to occupy some of the highest leadership positions, even though those posts are reserved for Pentecostal adherents (in part because some of the disputed board members were Presbyterian, which the court effectively found was “close enough”). The court waded—or perhaps more accurately dove headfirst—into the forbidden waters of adjudicating religious doctrine, specifically with respect to the opposing parties’ differing interpretations of Bethesda’s bylaws. The court claimed to apply “neutral principles” to side with one party over the other, but it nevertheless determined the leadership and doctrinal direction of a religious institution. This decision improperly entangled the court in religious controversy, in violation of the First Amendment.

Bethesda filed a cert petition that focuses on how it violates the Free Exercise Clause—specifically the ecclesiastical-abstention (or “church-autonomy”) doctrine and the ministerial exception to labor/antidiscrimination laws—for a court to interfere in an internal dispute and decide religious qualifications for the board members of a religious institution. The Manhattan Institute has now joined with the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty to file an amicus brief that explains how the church-autonomy doctrine protects religious minorities and that the so-called neutral-principles exception to that doctrine applies only to certain property disputes rather than allowing intrusion into governance issues.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.

Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

With thanks to law school associate Noam Josse

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