Labor / Employment, On The Job

'Spiritual Coercion' And 'The Lord’s Buffet'

Spiritual practices (even if 'coercive' as alleged by the DOL) will most likely remain beyond the purview of the government and its agencies.

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I grew up in a religious family. My dad and his dad were both preachers at small Baptist churches in Georgia. I was therefore in church every time the doors were open when I was growing up. As the black sheep of my family, I’m now a member of the Episcopal Church (“And also with you”). With this upbringing and background, I personally find religion and religious practices fascinating. Especially when televangelists are involved.

So last week when my colleague Wendy Sugg sent me a copy of Acosta v. Cathedral Buffet, Inc., a case handed down by the Sixth Circuit on April 16, 2018, I knew I had to write about it for this week’s column. There simply aren’t a lot of decisions handed down where televangelists and employment law intersect.

According to the decision, a church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (The Grace Cathedral church), owned and operated a restaurant called The Cathedral Buffet. The concurring opinion in the case explains that “the Buffet’s purpose was to allow the church’s members to proselytize among local residents who dined there.” The restaurant was partly staffed by church parishioners who cleaned, washed dishes, prepared food, and operated the cash register.

The volunteer parishioners worked alongside actual employees who were paid to do the same work. The case explains that the parishioners did so at the request of their preacher, televangelist Earnest Angley. In fact, the case says that ushers would pass around slips of paper during church services for congregants to write down their name and number so the restaurant manager could call and schedule them for a shift. The manager purportedly told churchgoers that if they refused to work, Reverend Angley would “find out.”

The decision also says that if the restaurant needed more workers Reverend Angley would tell congregants — again, during the church service — things like, “Every time you say no, you are closing the door on God.” The decision further reports Reverend Angley would tell church goers who refused to volunteer that they were at risk of “blaspheming against the Holy Ghost” if they didn’t volunteer, characterized as an “unforgivable sin in the church’s doctrine.”

The U.S. Department of Labor audited the restaurant and then filed a lawsuit against the restaurant and Reverend Angley. The DOL argued that the restaurant violated the minimum-wage requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act since the congregants weren’t paid even though they were doing the same work as the regular paid employees. The district court in Ohio ruled in favor of the DOL following a bench trial, finding that the for-profit restaurant was not exempt from the FLSA or its minimum-wage requirement. A $388,000 order against the restaurant was entered.

The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court. The court, citing Supreme Court precedent, held that “to be considered an employee within the meaning of the FLSA, a worker must first expect to receive compensation,” finding that the parishioners in the case did not expect to be paid. “Put simply,” the court wrote, “there was no economic relationship between the restaurant and the church member volunteers.”

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The DOL contended that the congregants were coerced into their volunteerism, overriding the fact that they had no expectation of payment for working in the restaurant. The court disagreed with the DOL’s position. The court explained that “[t]he type of coercion with which the FLSA is concerned is economic in nature, not societal or spiritual,” further finding that the FLSA was not intended to regulate “when, where, and how a person may volunteer her time to her church.”

In a sternly-worded concurring opinion, Judge Raymond Kethledge admonished the DOL for imposing itself on a “spiritual dialogue between pastor and congregation [which] assumes a power whose use would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” Judge Kethledge wrote that the DOL’s attempt to regulate “spiritual coercion” was beyond the agency’s limited scope of regulating economic matters.

This case reiterates that courts often give a lot of deference to religious institutions and are incredibly reluctant to condone perceived interference with or regulation of religious practices. As this case highlights, spiritual practices (even if “coercive” as alleged by the DOL) will most likely remain beyond the purview of the government and its agencies.

evan-gibbsEvan Gibbs is an attorney at Troutman Sanders, where he primarily litigates employment cases and handles traditional labor matters. Connect with him on LinkedIn here, or e-mail him here. (The views expressed in this column are his own.)

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