Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, COVERAGE, LIABILITY—5th Cir.: Church autonomy doctrine applies to claims of Baptist minister fired from executive director position, (Sep 10, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The minister was terminated from his executive director role due to his “wretched leadership.”

Affirming summary judgment against the various claims asserted against the North American Mission Board (NAMB) by an ordained minister who was employed as the executive director by the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware (BCMD), in which he alleged that NAMB spread “disparaging falsehoods” about him that prompted BCMD to terminate his employment, the Fifth Circuit found the church autonomy doctrine prohibits any court from adjudicating his claims. Dissenting, Judge Ramirez argued that as BCMD’s executive director, the plaintiff focused on setting and implementing a vision for BCMD and providing leadership. “Evangelism was not ‘in the job description’” (McRaney v. North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Inc., No. 23-60494 (5th Cir. Sept. 9, 2025)).

Although Baptist ecclesiology is non-hierarchical and each Baptist church is autonomous, Baptist churches, observed the Fifth Circuit, “have long voluntarily cooperated in fellowship with one another and pooled resources for missions, evangelism, and church planting.” NAMB is one of 12 different constituent boards or agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention, a national organization. NAMB pursues ministry priorities through cooperative partnerships with 42 different state or regional conventions of Baptist churches, including the BCMD, an organization of more than 500 autonomous Baptist churches in Maryland and Delaware.

Strategic partnership agreement. In 2012, NAMB and BCMD entered into a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) that memorialized “the relationships and responsibilities” of the two entities. As BCMD’s executive director and executive missional strategist from September 2012 to June 2015, the plaintiff sought to implement the SPA’s evangelical objectives, including overseeing and directing efforts to reach nonbelievers through church planting and evangelism.

Wretched leadership. The plaintiff and NAMB disagreed, however, as to how to carry out the SPA and in December 2014, NAMB informed BCMD of its intent to terminate the SPA. In June 2015, BCMD’s board voted to terminate the plaintiff as executive director due to his “wretched leadership.”

The plaintiff subsequently publicly campaigned against NAMB and its president for their perceived role in his termination from BCMD, including by posting numerous criticisms of NAMB on social media. In response to these posts, he was disinvited to a speaking conference and NAMB posted a no-entry photograph of him behind the reception desk at its headquarters.

Lawsuit and lower court proceedings. The plaintiff sued NAMB, alleging tortious interference with business relationships, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. NAMB asserted the church autonomy defense and the district court ultimately held that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the First Amendment to adjudicate the plaintiff’s disputes. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit reversed, finding it premature to conclude that the church autonomy doctrine barred his claims. On remand, NAMB again moved for summary judgment on church autonomy grounds and the district court granted its motion.

Church autonomy. Civil courts cannot adjudicate ecclesiastical matters, the appeals court first noted, as the church autonomy doctrine, which includes the ministerial exception, generally “protect[s] the right of churches and other religious institutions to decide matters of faith and doctrine” without the “intrusion” of secular courts. And where the doctrine applies, said the court, its protection is total because it is a constitutional immunity from suit.

Jurisdictional bar? Noting that the Supreme Court has at times described the doctrine as jurisdictional and at other times as non-jurisdictional, which has created confusion, the Fifth Circuit, after a lengthy analysis of the issue, concluded that the doctrine generally is not jurisdictional in the narrow Rule 12(b)(1) sense. “In sum,” said the court, “the church autonomy doctrine has numerous features of a jurisdictional bar. It limits the powers of federal courts. It immunizes ecclesiastical organizations from suit, not just liability. And, when it is denied, it gives rise to an immediate appeal. But ‘[t]he jurisdictional question... is not binary.’” Accordingly, said the Fifth Circuit, the doctrine does not “preclude federal courts from rendering judgment on the merits in cases like this one.”

No Baptist church. Turning to the merits, the court first addressed the plaintiff’s contention that the doctrine did not apply here because “NAMB is not a church,” “BCMD is not a church,” and “[t]here is no Baptist church; only Baptist churches.” Disagreeing, the Fifth Circuit, among other things, declined “to be the first court ever to hold the church autonomy doctrine protects only hierarchically organized religious entities.” Explaining that the doctrine is triggered by the subject matter of the dispute, not the organizational structure of the disputants, the court pointed out that the subject matter of this dispute is an evangelism project. “And it matters not one bit that the particular evangelicals before us happen to be Baptists from different non-hierarchical congregations instead of soul-saving Presbyterians from a singular hierarchical one.”

Conduct leading to termination. The court next considered whether the plaintiff’s particular claims fell within the doctrine’s ambit, starting with his claims concerning NAMB’s conduct leading to his termination by BCMD. Specifically, he alleged that NAMB tortiously caused BCMD to fire him by defaming him through the dissemination of “disparaging falsehoods” that also intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

But resolving these claims, said the court, would impermissibly require a court “to decide matters of faith and doctrine.” For instance, the court observed, a secular court cannot determine whether NAMB’s decision to exit the SPA had “right or justifiable cause,” without answering inherently religious questions about the SPA’s content or the plaintiff’s conformance with it. Nor can a secular court determine whether NAMB’s conduct was the “proximate cause” of BCMD’s decision to terminate the plaintiff without unlawfully intruding on a religious organization’s internal management decisions.

The SPA, the court stressed, is not a mere civil contract; it is “an inherently religious document” that is “steeped in religious doctrine.” And while, as the plaintiff argued, “breach” and “contractual agreement” are secular terms, determining what conduct constitutes breach of the SPA “turn[s] on the resolution... of controversies over religious doctrine and practice.”

Ministerial exception. As to the ministerial exception, the court explained that while the plaintiff sued NAMB rather than BCMD, his former employer, that did not change the analysis. “The First Amendment’s protection of a religious organization’s right to decide ‘who will personify its beliefs,’ and ‘who will minister to the faithful,’ extends just as strongly to ministries structured through voluntary associations and at-will partnerships,” the court stated, noting that the “availability of the ministerial exception cannot turn on the choices religious organizations make about ‘the formation of corporate entities.’”

Supreme Court precedent, the court observed, requires that courts stay out of employment disputes involving ministers and ecclesiastical organizations and the plaintiff’s claims against NAMB “‘litigate the employment relationship between’ him and BCMD and would force a court to ‘interpose’ itself into NAMB’s and BCMD’s ‘decisions... relating to how and by whom they spread their message’ and how they fund it.”

Post-termination claims. The ministerial exception, said the court, also defeated his post-termination claims that NAMB’s conduct caused other religious organizations not to hire him. His tortious interference and defamation claims against NAMB would require a court to determine why other religious institutions did not hire him for ministry roles. To side with the plaintiff, the court explained, a court would have to hold that the ministry groups rejected him because of NAMB’s defamation and not because the ministries found another Christ-like leader they liked better, trusted better, or otherwise preferred for any other non-defamatory ecclesiastical reason.

Affirming summary judgment against the plaintiff’s claims, the court noted that “NAMB has endured protracted discovery, two rounds of summary judgment, a previous appeal, and a close en banc rehearing poll,” and this “unconstitutional violation of church autonomy ends today.”

Dissent. In a separate opinion, Judge Ramirez wrote that the plaintiff “sued a board of an organization for which he did not work, alleging interference with contract, interference with prospective business relations, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Because his secular claims against a third-party organization do not implicate matters of church government or of faith and doctrine, I respectfully dissent.”

The case is No. 23-60494.

Judge: Oldham, A.

Attorneys: Scott E. Gant (Boies, Schiller & Flexner) for Will McRaney. Matthew T. Martens (Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr) for North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Inc.

Companies: North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Inc.

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