DEBORAH K. CHASANOW, District Judge.
Plaintiff Alicia Byrd ("Plaintiff") initiated the instant action against Defendants William P. DeVeaux, Sr. ("Bishop DeVeaux"), the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church ("General Conference"), and the Washington Conference Second Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church ("Washington Conference") (collectively, "Defendants") in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland on September 27, 2017. Bishop DeVeaux and the General Conference, with the consent of the Washington Conference, removed the case to this court on November 3, 2017 based on diversity jurisdiction. (ECF No. 1). The complaint alleges two counts: (1) false light invasion of privacy (ECF No. 2, at 19-21), and (2) alternate liability of the General Conference and the Washington Conference based on their agency relationship with Bishop DeVeaux (Id. ¶¶ 90-92). Plaintiff seeks $3,600,500 in compensatory damages, $10,815,000 in punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and prejudgment and post-judgment interest. (ECF No. 2, at 22-23). Plaintiff filed a motion for leave to amend her complaint on August 1, 2018. (ECF No. 30). Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on August 6, 2018. (ECF No. 33). Defendants also filed a motion to strike Plaintiff's response to Defendants' motion for summary judgment on September 4, 2018, asserting that Plaintiff violated Local Rule 105.3 by exceeding the maximum page limitations in her response. (ECF No. 38). The issues have been fully briefed, and the court now rules, no hearing being deemed necessary. Local Rule 105.6. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion for summary judgment will be granted and Plaintiff's motion to amend will be denied.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church ("AME Church") is a worldwide church denomination that is divided into twenty districts. (ECF No. 33-3 ¶ 2). Each AME Church district is further divided into conferences. St. Stephens is a local, hierarchical church located in Maryland that "falls within . . . the Washington [AME Church] Conference."
Upon completing a one-year term as AME chaplain at Howard University, Plaintiff was appointed to the position of pastor for St. Stephens in 1988. (ECF No. 35-1, at 4, p. 22). Plaintiff continued to serve as pastor at St. Stephens until being placed on administrative leave in 2015. (ECF No. 35-1 ¶¶ 2-3). During the 2012-2015 period of her tenure, Plaintiff operated under the leadership of Bishop DeVeaux, who "served as the Bishop and presiding prelate of the Second Episcopal District of the AME Church." (ECF No. 33-3 ¶ 3).
In 1994, St. Stephens church members formed the St. Stephens Economic Development Corporation ("the corporation") as part of an initiative to "seek ways that the church could expand their church meeting and ministry spaces."
Beginning in June 2010, the corporation failed to furnish timely loan payments according to the loan repayment terms.
In addition to the child care and community center construction loan, the Corporation also secured a $50,000 line of credit on the church property in September 2008. This loan resulted from the corporation's construction of an adult day care center at 7320 Roosevelt Boulevard in Elkridge, MD. The corporation financed the adult day care project with a $487,000 grant from the State of Maryland Board of Public Works and a $241,000 loan from Harbor Bank. The corporation refinanced the adult day care center in 2008. Refinancing retired the Harbor Bank loan and replaced it "with a $550,000 loan from the Washington Savings Bank." The new loan "included a $50,000 business line of credit [that] was cross-collateralized on the [church] property." (ECF No. 35-1 ¶¶ 30-31). The new loan was twice transferred in 2013: (1) to Old Line Bank in May 2013 due to Old Line Bank's acquisition of Washington Savings Bank (Id. ¶ 32); and (2) to Greenwich Investors in October 2013 due to a general transfer (Id. ¶ 33).
Bishop DeVeaux first learned about St. Stephens' financial difficulties in early 2015. (ECF No. 33-3 ¶ 12). In response, Bishop DeVeaux referred Plaintiff to the Ministerial Efficiency Committee ("MEC") in March 2015 for the purpose of determining "whether or not [Plaintiff]'s actions led to the danger of losing St. Stephen's AME Church."
Plaintiff met with the MEC on two separate occasions.
Plaintiff also asserts that a March 30, 2015 letter alleging that Plaintiff commingled church funds "was [] reported to meetings of the Bishops' Council of the AME Church[.]" (ECF No. 35-1 ¶ 57). Plaintiff's affidavit seems to imply that Bishop DeVeaux published the letter. However, Plaintiff's complaint and opposition do not include a copy of the letter and Plaintiff does not provide further information about the complete contents of the letter or who wrote the letter.
Defendants move to strike Plaintiff's response to Defendants' motion for summary judgment, arguing that "[t]he total length of the [o]pposition is forty-seven (47) pages," and the local rules limit the length of opposition memoranda to thirty-five pages. (ECF No. 38 ¶¶ 2-3). In response, Plaintiff's attorney submitted a sworn affidavit wherein he apologizes to the court and explains his mistaken reliance on the former local rule that limited opposition memoranda to fifty pages. (ECF No. 42, at 3-4).
Pursuant to Local Rule 105.3, memoranda "in support of a motion or in opposition thereto" are not to exceed thirty-five (35) pages, exclusive of attachments, absent leave of court. Although Plaintiff's response considerably exceeds the page limitation, Defendants' motion to strike will be denied and Plaintiff's response will be considered in its entirety. Despite this allowance, Plaintiff's counsel is advised to stay informed of changes to court rules and procedures.
Defendants first argue that the First Amendment ecclesiastical abstention doctrine presents a jurisdictional bar to Plaintiff's claim. (ECF No. 33-1, at 6). Challenges to subject matter jurisdiction are evaluated under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1). Generally, "questions of subject matter jurisdiction must be decided first, because they concern the court's very power to hear the case." Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Meade, 186 F.3d 435, 442 n.4 (4th Cir. 1999). The party bringing suit in federal court bears the burden of proving that subject matter jurisdiction properly exists. See Evans v. B.F. Perkins Co., 166 F.3d 642, 647 (4th Cir. 1999). In deciding a Rule 12(b)(1) motion, the court "may consider evidence outside the pleadings" to help determine whether it has jurisdiction over the case before it. Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac R.R. Co. v. U.S., 945 F.2d 765, 768 (4th Cir. 1991); see also Evans, 166 F.3d at 647. Such a motion should only be granted "if the material jurisdictional facts are not in dispute and the moving party is entitled to prevail as a matter of law." Richmond, 945 F.2d at 768.
Defendants' remaining arguments seek summary judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. A motion for summary judgment will be granted only if "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a); see Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250 (1986); Emmett v. Johnson, 532 F.3d 291, 297 (4th Cir. 2008). To prevail on a motion for summary judgment, the movant generally bears the burden of showing that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. at 248-50. A dispute about a material fact is genuine "if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party." Id. at 249. In undertaking this inquiry, a court must view the facts and the reasonable inferences drawn therefrom "in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion," Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986) (quoting United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655 (1962)); see also EEOC v. Navy Fed. Credit Union, 424 F.3d 397, 405 (4th Cir. 2005), but a "party cannot create a genuine dispute of material fact through mere speculation or compilation of inferences." Shin v. Shalala, 166 F.Supp.2d 373, 375 (D.Md. 2001) (citation omitted). If a party "fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case . . . which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial[,]" there can be no "genuine issue as to any material fact, since a complete failure of proof concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party's case necessarily renders all other facts immaterial." Celotex Corp., 477 U.S. at 323.
As to this claim, Defendants argue that: (1) the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction due to the First Amendment ecclesiastical abstention doctrine; (2) Plaintiff's claim is barred under the First Amendment ministerial exception; (3) Plaintiff's claim lacks essential elements required to demonstrate false light invasion of privacy; and (4) Plaintiff's claim is barred by the common interest conditional privilege. (ECF No. 33, at 1).
Defendants contend that, under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine ("the doctrine"), the court may not "rule upon matters that fall squarely within the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment." (ECF No. 33-1, at 11). Defendants state that "[c]laims such as false light invasion of privacy and defamation require review of the church's stated reason for the discharge, which is an essentially ecclesiastical concern." (Id., at 9) (internal quotations omitted).
Matters of ecclesiastical doctrine sometimes are not amenable to review by civil courts. As the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reasoned in Dixon v. Edwards, 290 F.3d 699, 714 (4th Cir. 2002):
"In keeping with the First Amendment's proscription against the `establishment of religion' or prohibiting the `free exercise thereof,' civil courts have long taken care not to intermeddle in internal ecclesiastical disputes." Bell v. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 126 F.3d 328, 330 (4th Cir. 1997). The Fourth Circuit explained in Bell, 126 F.3d at 331:
(emphasis added).
The First Amendment does not, however, remove all controversies involving religious institutions from the purview of civil courts. Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595, 602-03 (1979); American Union of Baptists, Inc. v. Trustees of Particular Primitive Baptist Church at Black Rock, Inc. et al., 335 Md. 564, 574 (1994) ("Each set of circumstances must be evaluated on an individual basis by the court to determine whether, under the facts of that particular case, a court would be forced to wander into the `theological thicket' in order to render a decision."). Maryland courts opt to apply neutral civil law principles whenever possible to resolve church disputes that do not involve doctrinal implications. See American Union of Baptists, Inc., 335 Md. at 575 ("Although the line separating those disputes which are grounded in religious doctrine from those which concern purely secular matters is often difficult to discern, we have in many cases been able to resolve church property disputes with the application of neutral principles of law."); Babcock Mem. Pres. Ch. v. Presbytery, 296 Md. 573 (1983) (resolving interests in property by determining whether the church polity was congregational or hierarchical in nature; such an inquiry required application of neutral principles of law).
Defendants' argument predominantly relies on two analogous cases before the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland: Downs v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, 111 Md.App. 616 (1996) and Bourne v. Ctr. on Children, Inc., 154 Md.App. 42 (2003).
In Downs, the appellant was released from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and barred from consideration for the diocesan priesthood. Prior to appellant's release, "defendant Reverent John T. Wielebski, `made and published false and defamatory statements respecting [p]laintiff's honesty, reliability, integrity and morality, specifically, asserting sexually motivated conduct toward certain staff members of St. Patrick's Parish." Downs, 111 Md.App. at 619-620. Appellant filed a complaint against appellees alleging two counts of defamation. Id. at 618-619. The court held that the Circuit Court for Baltimore County lacked subject matter jurisdiction. The court concluded that the case fell "squarely within the protective ambit of the First Amendment" because appellant's clerical supervisors made allegedly defamatory statements against appellant as an expression of their determination that he "was not a suitable candidate for the priesthood." Id. at 625.
In Bourne, the Court of Special Appeals again concluded that the Free Exercise clause precluded the Circuit Court for Baltimore City from exercising subject matter jurisdiction. The appellant there founded the Lighthouse Community Church under the Church of the Nazarene Christian denomination. Id. at 45. The General Board of the Church of the Nazarene rejected appellant's request to become an "ordained" minister of the church and reassigned him to a post in Trinidad. Appellant's relationship with church leaders deteriorated during the board's deliberation process and led a church minister to circulate a letter "containing defamatory statements concerning the status of appellant's paid vacation time" to church members. Id. at 50. Appellant sued church leaders for breach of employment contract, defamation, and false light. Id. at 45. The Court of Special Appeals held that, because the statements constituted part of the clergy's determination that appellant was not suitable for ordination, the court was precluded from reviewing appellant's defamation and false light claims:
Bourne, 154 Md.App. at 56-57 (emphasis added).
To establish the tort of false light invasion of privacy, Plaintiff must demonstrate that: (1) the defendants' statements have placed the plaintiff in a false light before the public; (2) the false light is highly offensive to a reasonable person; and (3) the defendant had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized material and the false light in which the plaintiff would be placed. Bagwell v. Peninsula Reg'l Med. Ctr., 106 Md.App. 470, 513-14 (1995). To satisfy the first element, the statement in question must have actually been false. Thus, Plaintiff's claim will turn, in part, on analyzing the truthfulness of Defendants' purported public statements about Plaintiff. Under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiff's claim if this analysis requires the court to "adjudicate matters of church doctrine or governance, or to second-guess ecclesiastical decisions made by a church body created to make those decisions." Downs, 111 Md.App. at 622.
The MEC created the reports as part of their "church discipline" process wherein they considered whether Plaintiff complied with the standards of the AME church's internal "ecclesiastical government." Serbian E. Orthodox Diocese for U. S. of Am. & Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 714 (1976). While the circumstances surrounding the March 30, 2015 letter are unclear, Plaintiff's statements about the letter indicate that it was also created in relation to Plaintiff's disciplinary review. Plaintiff's claim for false light falls outside the court's subject matter jurisdiction because it requires the court to reexamine the MEC's findings, which would "deprive the [MEC] of the right to construe [its] own church laws." Id.
Plaintiff points to several statements in the MEC's reports and the March 30, 2015 letter in support of her single count of false light invasion of privacy. Plaintiff specifically relies on the statements that she failed to seek approval from the appropriate authority to use the church property as collateral, failed to make mortgage payments on the church property for eight years, and commingled church funds. (ECF No. 2, at 19-20). Some of the independent statements Plaintiff relies on are obviously fused with concepts of church law, polity, or doctrine, while others appear secular. For example, analyzing whether Plaintiff sought approval from the appropriate church authorities clearly requires an inquiry into church doctrine and procedure, but analyzing the veracity of the statement that Plaintiff failed to pay the church property mortgage for eight years only requires consideration of Plaintiff's payment history. Regardless of the individual analysis that each statement compels, Defendants made the overall reports and letter as part of the MEC's disciplinary review of Plaintiff. As held in Bourne, "[w]hen allegedly defamatory statements are made during the process of determining fitness for religious leadership positions, even if the statements are invalid and unfair, such speech is protected through the ambit of the First Amendment freedom of religious provisions." 154 Md.App. at 56 (citing Downs, 111 Md.App. at 625-626). As a whole, the reports and letter constitute a matter of internal church discipline, and the statements contained within the documents are incapable of extrapolation from the overall ecclesiastical nature of the documents. Thus, Plaintiff's false light claim is barred by the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.
Plaintiff argues that her false light claim should be excepted from the doctrine because the MEC's disciplinary proceedings were tainted by fraud or collusion. Defendants purportedly committed fraud or collusion in the disciplinary proceedings against Plaintiff by "act[ing] in total disregard for the bylaws contained in the Discipline." (ECF No. 35, at 40) (emphasis removed). Plaintiff's response describes the MEC's multitude of Discipline violations and concludes that Defendants "essentially have not played by the rules." (Id., at 40).
Plaintiff relies on First Baptist Church of Glen Este v. State of Ohio, 591 F.Supp. 676, 677 (S.D. Ohio 1983), an outdated case that is not binding authority here. The Supreme Court of the United States originally found that fraud, collusion or arbitrariness could warrant court review of ecclesiastical matters in Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, 280 U.S. 1 (1929). The Court later clarified in Milivojevich that the exception "was dictum only," and discarded the arbitrariness component altogether:
426 U.S. at 712. Plaintiff's numerous references to the Discipline demonstrate that, to determine whether the fraud or collusion exception applies here, the court would have to decipher and analyze the process for disciplining pastors within the AME Church. Plaintiff asks the court to conduct the very analysis described above as prohibited under the First Amendment. Because the court "must accept the ecclesiastical decisions of church tribunals as it finds them," the fraud or collusion exception cannot place Defendants' statements within the court's subject matter jurisdiction. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. at 713.
Plaintiff also argues in favor of subject matter jurisdiction on the basis that two prior proceedings pertaining to the church property construed "the application section of real property in the Discipline." (ECF No. 35, at 46). However, it is well-settled that "[c]ivil courts do not inhibit free exercise of religion merely by opening their doors to disputes involving church property." Presbyterian Church in U.S. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Mem'l Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 449 (1969) (emphasis added). As already discussed above, Plaintiff's false light invasion of privacy claim is subject to different requirements, and thus a different analysis, under the doctrine than the property disputes Plaintiff references in her response. Consequently, Plaintiff's attempt to analogize her false light claim to a property dispute is unsuccessful.
Defendants also argue that they are entitled to summary judgment because Plaintiff's claims are barred by the ministerial exception. Plaintiff's response does not address the ministerial exception.
Like the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, the ministerial exception originates from the First Amendment. The exception "precludes application of [employment discrimination laws] to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers." Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. E.E.O.C., 565 U.S. 171, 188 (2012). The Supreme Court described the exception in Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 188-189:
The Supreme Court concluded that the ministerial exception bars "an employment discrimination suit brought on behalf of a minister challenging her church's decision to fire her," but "express[ed] no view on whether the exception bars other types of suits, including actions by employees alleging breach of contract or tortious conduct by their religious employers." Id., at 196. The exception "operates as an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not a jurisdictional bar . . . because the issue presented by the exception is `whether the allegations the plaintiff makes entitle him to relief,' not whether the court has `power to hear [the] case.'" Id., at n.4 (quoting Morrison v. Nat'l Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 254 (2010)).
The ministerial exception most commonly applies to employment claims. See, e.g., Shaliehsabou v. Hebrew Home of Greater Washington, Inc., 363 F.3d 299, 305 (4th Cir. 2004) ("We have recognized that there is a ministerial exception to the FLSA."); E.E.O.C. v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., 213 F.3d 795, 800 (4th Cir. 2000) (applying the ministerial exception to plaintiff's Title VII claim). However, the Court of Appeals of Maryland held in Prince of Peace Lutheran Church v. Linklater, 421 Md. 664 (2011), that the ministerial exception precluded plaintiff's tortious claims, including intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, and breach of implied contract. The court cited approvingly Black v. Snyder, 471 N.W.2d 715, 720 (Minn.Ct.App. 1991), which held that a defamation claim violates the ministerial exception when it requires "review of the church's motives for discharging [plaintiff]." Linklater, 421 Md. at 697. Here, Plaintiff's claim is rooted in the MEC's disciplinary review of Plaintiff and decision that Plaintiff should be placed on administrative leave. Under Linklater, the ministerial exception would apply to Plaintiff's false light claim and would provide an additional reason to grant summary judgment to Defendants.
Under these circumstances, it is not necessary to analyze Defendants' remaining arguments.
Defendants next argue that they "are entitled to judgment as a matter of law as to Plaintiff's Count II for vicarious liability[.]" (ECF No. 33-1, at 22). Defendants state that Plaintiff's claim for alternate liability is actually a respondeat superior claim that fails because respondeat superior is not a separate cause of action. Plaintiff fails to address or defend her alternate liability claim in her opposition to Defendants' motion for summary judgment. Indeed, there is no independent cause of action for alternate liability. To the extent Plaintiff intends Count II to be a claim for respondeat superior, as Defendants suggest, the claim is unsuccessful because the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiff's false light claim and "there is no separate cause of action for respondeat superior." Stewart v. Bierman, 859 F.Supp.2d 754, 768 (D.Md. 2012), aff'd sub nom. Lembach v. Bierman, 528 F.App'x 297 (4th Cir. 2013).
Plaintiff seeks leave to amend her complaint to add "Reverends Bell, Browning, Glenn Langston, Lamar, Mosby, Seawright, Washington, Weaver and White" as named Defendants because "during discovery it was determined that members of the [MEC] should become Defendants due to the publication of false statements in the 66th Session of the Washington Annual Conference[.]" (ECF No. 30 ¶¶ 5-6). Plaintiff's proposed amendment also changes "the name of the Defendant, General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to read `African Methodist Episcopal Church, Incorporated.'" (Id., ¶ 4). In their response, Defendants assert that Plaintiff must demonstrate good cause to amend her complaint because the 21-day period to amend as a matter of course expired well before she moved to amend. (ECF No. 34, at 3). Defendants argue that Plaintiff should have been aware of the additional defendants prior to discovery and, as a result, she cannot "demonstrate good cause to allow her to belatedly file an amended complaint." (Id., at 4).
A party may amend its pleading once as a matter of course within 21 days after serving it or within 21 days after service of a motion under Rule 12(b), whichever is earlier. Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(1). When the right to amend as a matter of course expires, "a party may amend its pleading only with the opposing party's written consent or the court's leave." Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). Rule 15(a)(2) provides that courts should "freely give leave [to amend] when justice so requires," and commits the matter to the discretion of the district court. See Simmons v. United Mortg. & Loan Inv., LLC, 634 F.3d 754, 769 (4th Cir. 2011). Denial of leave to amend is appropriate "only when the amendment would be prejudicial to the opposing party, there has been bad faith on the part of the moving party, or the amendment would be futile." Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 242 (4th Cir. 1999) (emphasis in original) (quoting Johnson v. Oroweat Foods Co., 785 F.2d 503, 509 (4th Cir. 1986)). Leave to amend may be denied as futile "if the proposed amended complaint fails to satisfy the requirements of the federal rules," including federal pleading standards. Katyle v. Perm Nat. Gaming, Inc., 637 F.3d 462, 471 (4th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States ex rel. Wilson v. Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., 525 F.3d 370, 376 (4th Cir. 2008)).
Plaintiff's proposed amendments would be futile because they fail to cure her complaint's deficiencies. Naming additional defendants would do nothing to alleviate the obstacles impeding Plaintiff's claims. Additionally, bringing Plaintiff's proposed defendants into the case would likely destroy diversity jurisdiction.
For the foregoing reasons, Defendants' motion for summary judgment will be granted. Plaintiff's motion for leave of court to amend complaint and Defendants' motion to strike response in opposition to motion will be denied. A separate order will follow.
