Depressingly wrong church-and-state ruling from the Texas Supreme Court recently:
On Saturday June 8, 1996, Tom and Judy Schubert left town, leaving their three teenage children at home. While the Schuberts were away, their seventeen-year-old daughter, Laura, spent much of her time at the family’s church, Pleasant Glade Assembly of God, participating in church-related activities.
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During the evening service, Laura collapsed. After her collapse, several church members took Laura to a classroom where they “laid hands” on her and prayed. According to Laura, church members forcibly held her arms crossed over her chest, despite her demands to be freed. According to those present, Laura clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, foamed at the mouth, made guttural noises, cried, yelled, kicked, sweated, and hallucinated. The parties sharply dispute whether these actions were the cause or the result of her physical restraint.Church members, moreover, disagreed about whether Laura’s actions were a ploy for attention or the result of spiritual activity. Laura stated during the episode that Satan or demons were trying to get her. After the episode, Laura also allegedly began telling other church members about a “vision.” Yet, her collapse and subsequent reaction to being restrained may also have been the result of fatigue and hypoglycemia. Laura had not eaten anything substantive that day and had missed sleep because of the spiritual activities that weekend. Whatever the cause, Laura was eventually released after she calmed down and complied with requests to say the name “Jesus.”
Cutting to the chase, the parents sued for the vicious assault by these demented lunatics upon their underage child. So far, so good.
But the family only won damages related to the physical assault of the minor (indeed, the church admitted liability on that count from the outset). This litigation concerned the psychological and emotional harm resulting from this redneck Pentecostal “exorcism.”
If the court had found that there had simply no been no such psychological or emotional harm, then so be it — and this would have been a very different blogpost.
Instead, the court went down a much worse path:
Pleasant Glade and the other defendants sought a protective order and moved to dismiss the Schuberts’ lawsuit as an unconstitutional burden on their religious practices, describing the litigation as “a dispute regarding how services should be conducted within a church, including the practice of ‘laying on of hands.’”
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We have previously said that adjudication of this type of claim “would necessarily require an inquiry into the truth or falsity of religious beliefs that is forbidden by the Constitution.”
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In this case, although Laura’s secular injury claims might theoretically be tried without mentioning religion, the imposition of tort liability for engaging in religious activity to which the church members adhere would have an unconstitutional “chilling effect” by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs.
In other words, it is supposedly wrong for a court to tell a church not to illegally traumatize kids, because then those churches might actually refrain from illegally traumatizing kids.
Splendid.
In questions of sexual torture versus consent, “stop” means stop. But in questions of religious torture versus consent, “stop” apparently means you’re still possessed by demons and need yet more “laying on of hands.” And your torturers are somehow protected by the First Amendment the whole time. A Santeria witch doctor can’t hide behind the First Amendment when he seeks to slaughter a helpless animal, but a Christian pastor can invoke “church and state” when he’s psychologically scarring a minor for life.
That simply cannot be right.
For a reality-based analysis, we must rely on the dissenting opinions. We have three to choose from; I will quote from two:
[I]f Schubert were merely complaining of being expelled from the church, she would have no claim in the civil courts. But again, this case, as it was tried, is not about beliefs or “intangible harms” — it is about violent action — specifically, twice pinning a screaming, crying teenage girl to the floor for extended periods of time. … The tort of false imprisonment is a religiously neutral law of general applicability, and the First Amendment provides no protection against it.
Exactly right, just like animal cruelty is (usually) a religiously neutral law of general applicability that is simply not negated by the First Amendment whenever some barbarian wants to disembowel a goat.
Because the fundamental principles of Texas common law do not conflict with the Free Exercise Clause, courts can and should decide cases like this according to neutral principles of tort law. If a plaintiff’s case can be made without relying on religious doctrine, the defendant must be required to respond in kind. … If Schubert had consented to the church’s actions, the consent — under our familiar, neutral principles of tort law — would have completely defeated her claims. The jury, however, found that Schubert had not consented, and Pleasant Glade does not challenge that conclusion.
Could you imagine if you, as an agnostic music lover, attended a choir recital in a church and then were told, without warning or your prior consent, that you could not leave until you underwent a ritual baptism or exorcism? Now imagine it wasn’t you but your minor child. Would you meekly accept a court ruling that there was, somehow, a “First Amendment defense” to your lawsuit?
The family is reportedly considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Good for them.
The case is Pleasant Glade Assembly of God v. Schubert, No. 05-0916 (Supr. Ct. Tex., June 27, 2008).
