EQUAL
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Plaintiff-Appellee, v.
No.
84-2779
UNITED
STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
781 F.2d 1362
October
10, 1985, Argued and Submitted
February
3, 1986, Decided
PRIOR HISTORY:
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District
of California William H. Orrick, District Judge, Presiding, D.C. No. CV
83-2619-WHO.
COUNSEL: Justine S. Lisser, EEOC,
William B. Ball, Esq., Ball & Skelly,
JUDGES: Anderson, Farris, and Nelson, Circuit
Judges.
OPINION BY:
OPINION
(PAGE 1362)
ANDERSON, Circuit Judge:
Fremont Christian
School (Fremont Christian), a church-owned and operated private school, appeals
from the district court's order granting the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission's (EEOC) motion for partial summary judgment and an injunction
prohibiting unequal compensation of married female and male employees. The
district court granted summary judgment to EEOC on the issue of liability on
the grounds that Fremont Christian had violated Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et.
seq., and the Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d), and is barred from raising
the religion clauses of the First Amendment as a defense for its personnel
policies. The employment policy involved here is a health insurance plan provided by Fremont Christian but
only to "head of household" employees interpreted by the school to be
single persons and married men. Because of the existence of a strong compelling
state interest in eradicating discrimination, coupled with the fact that
eliminating the employment policy involved here would not interfere with
religious belief, and only minimally, if at all, with the practice of religion,
we affirm the judgment of the district court.
I. Facts
While persons
employed by Fremont Christian need not be members of the Fremont Assembly of
God Church, they must be a member in good standing of an evangelical church and
subscribe to specific tenets of faith. These tenets include the belief that the
Bible is to be taken literally. Among the doctrinal beliefs held by the Church
is the belief that, while the sexes are equal in dignity before God, they are
differentiated in role. In light of this conviction, the Church believes, based
on, inter alia, Ephesians 5:23, that in
any marriage, the husband is the head of the household and is required to
provide for that household.
In keeping with this
belief, until 1976, the Church and Fremont Christian compensated their married
male employees at a rate higher than similarly-situated female employees. After
learning in January, 1976, that this practice may have been illegal, the school
board determined at its September, 1976 meeting that "since it is possibly
illegal to pay a head of household allowance to employees, it was moved . . .
and seconded . . . to eliminate this provision from our contracts. Motion so
carried."
Fremont Christian
compensates its employees according to pay scales set for the teaching and
administrative staff. For teachers, these take into account years of teaching
experience, education, and post-degree continuing education efforts. The pay
scales are now applied uniformly to both male and female teachers.
As part of its
compensation package, Fremont Christian offers all full-time employees
disability and life insurance regardless of sex or marital status, the premiums
for which are paid by Fremont Christian.
Fremont Christian also provides health insurance as a fringe benefit. However, this benefit is available only to heads of households, interpreted by Fremont Christian to be single persons and married men. Fremont Christian believes that, in any marriage, only the man can be the head of
(PAGE 1365)
the household, regardless of what his salary
is in relation to that of his wife. As explained by Rev. Rankin, the
superintendent of Fremont Christian, the test for routine eligibility for
health insurance for women is whether they are married. If so, the husband is
presumed to be the head of the household, rendering women ineligible for health
benefits.
In certain
situations, however, where the husband is incapable of providing for his
family, by virtue of non-working student status, or illness, Fremont Christian
undertakes, as an "act of Christian charity," to extend health
benefits to a full-time married female employee for the limited period of her
husband's incapacity. Nevertheless, the husband is still scripturally the head
of the household.
On June 16, 1981,
Ruth P. Frost, a married female employee of the School, filed with the EEOC a
charge of sex discrimination against Fremont Christian on the ground that it gives health insurance coverage to
its married male employees but not (with minor exceptions) to its married
female employees. On December 3, 1982, EEOC issued a Notice of Determination in
favor of Mrs. Frost. On May 24, 1983, EEOC brought the present action in the
United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging
violations by Fremont Christian of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et. seq., and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,
as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et. seq. Fremont Christian, in its answer,
denied violation of either act and raised affirmative defenses under the
Religion Clauses of the First Amendment. On December 6, 1983, EEOC moved for
partial summary judgment on the liability issue. On April 16, 1984, 609 F. Supp. 344 (3rd
Cir.), the district court granted EEOC's motion. The district court, on October
17, 1984, denied Fremont Christian's motion for reconsideration and granted
EEOC's motion for injunctive relief. On December 4, 1984, Fremont Christian
timely appealed to this court.
II. Discussion
Fremont Christian
presents both statutory and
constitutional arguments against application of Title VII to its employment
policies. Before reaching Fremont Christian's constitutional arguments, this
court must determine whether the dispute may be resolved on statutory
grounds. International Association of
Machinists v. Street, 367
A. Application of Title VII
The application of
Title VII to the employment practice before us would definitely give rise to
serious constitutional questions. See, e.g.,
Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the United States and Canada v.
Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696 (1976); Kedroff
v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94 (1952); Pacific Press, 676 F.2d 1272 (9th Cir. 1982); Rayburn v.
General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, 772 F.2d 1164 (4th Cir.
1985); McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553 (5th Cir.), cert.
denied, 409 U.S. 896 (1972). However, we
conclude that Congress has clearly expressed the intention that Title VII apply
to the present circumstances.
Fremont Christian argues that the exemption created by Section 702 of Title VII, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1 (1982), for religious institutions extends beyond hiring practices and encompasses all other employment practices (e.g., the health insurance
(PAGE 1366)
compensation program). Both the language and
legislative history of Title VII, however, indicate that the statute exempts
religious institutions only to a narrow extent. Section 702 provides:
This subchapter shall not apply . . . to a religious corporation, association,
educational institution, or society with respect to the employment of
individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the
carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or
society of its activities.
To be sure, § 702
prohibits some forms of state involvement in ecclesiastical decisions of
employment. See Rayburn, 772 F.2d at 1166. "If, for example, a
religious institution were to present 'convincing evidence' that an employment
practice favored members of one faith or denomination over another, '§ 702
deprives the EEOC of jurisdiction to investigate further to determine whether
the religious discrimination was a pretext for some other form of discrimination.'"
While the language of
§ 702 makes clear that religious institutions may base relevant hiring
decisions upon religious preferences, "religious employers are not immune
from liability [under Title VII]
for discrimination based on . . . sex . . . ." Pacific Press, 676
F.2d at 1276. Furthermore, Congress and this court have specifically
"rejected proposals that provide[] religious employers a complete
exemption from regulation under the [Civil Rights] Act [of 1964]."
The legislative
history reinforces the plain meaning of the statutory text. The original Act
passed by the House in 1964 excluded religious employers from coverage
altogether. H.R. Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. (1964), reprinted in
1964 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News, 2355, 2391, 2402. The final version
excluded such employers only with respect to discrimination based on religion,
and then only with respect to persons hired to carry out the employer's
"religious activities." P.L. 88-352, Title VII, § 702, 78 Stat. 241
(July 2, 1964), reprinted in 1964 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News 287,
304. In 1972 the statute was amended to delete the word "religious,"
P.L. 92-261 § 3, 86 Stat. 103 (March 24, 1972), but Congress specifically
rejected proposals to broaden further the scope of the exemption. Subcommittee
on Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare of the
Fremont Christian
further argues that it is exempted from application of Title VII under the bona
fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) exemption, § 703(e), 42 U.S.C. §
2000e-2(e). This exemption provides that it shall not be an unlawful employment
practice for an employer to admit or employ an individual on the basis of
religion, sex, or national origin "in those certain instances where
religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification
reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or
enterprise." Fremont Christian contends that its health insurance
compensation program is just such a BFOQ.
It has been noted
that this exception does not apply to the full range of possibly discriminatory
employment actions. See 1 L. Larson, Employment Discrimination §
13.00 (1985). "It uses only the words 'to hire and employ,' while the
earlier section [§ 703(a)] detailing unlawful employment practices lists, in
addition, such specific acts as 'to discharge' and . . . includes a catchall
phrase, 'or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to
his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.'"
(PAGE 1367)
of the offense and the defense has caused little litigation, it should
not be overlooked, since the oversight might tempt a defendant mistakenly to
invoke the BFOQ exception in a case involving, say, discrimination in pay."
Fremont Christian's
final statutory argument is that its health insurance compensation program does
not violate the Equal Pay Act because it is based on "any factor other
than sex," 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1)(iv); in this case, religious beliefs. The EEOC claims that because the
"head of household" refers only to men, the health insurance compensation
program could not be based on any other factor but sex.
Sometimes differentials in pay to employees performing equal work are
said to be based on the fact that one employee is head of a household and the
other, of the opposite sex, is not. In general, such allegations have not been
substantiated. Experience indicates that where such factor is claimed the wage
differentials tend to be paid to employees of one sex only, regardless of the
fact that employees of the opposite sex may bear equal or greater financial
responsibility as head of a household or for the support of parents or other
family dependents. Accordingly, . . . the general position of the Secretary of
Labor and the Administrator is that they are not prepared to conclude that any
differential allegedly based on such status is based on a 'factor other than
sex' within the intent of the statute.
29 C.F.R. § 800.149. We are equally unwilling to conclude
that this exception to the Equal Pay Act applies to the particular
circumstances of this case.
We now turn to the
constitutional questions.
B. Free Exercise Clause
Fremont Christian
alleges that Title VII and the Equal Pay Act do not apply to its employment
policy of supplying health insurance to the head of the household because it is
grounded in religious belief and is therefore shielded by the free exercise
clause of the First Amendment. To determine whether a neutrally-based statute,
such as Title VII or the Act, violates the free exercise clause, this court
weighs three factors: (1) the magnitude of the statute's impact on the exercise
of a religious belief; (2) the existence of a compelling state interest
justifying the burden imposed upon the exercise of the religious belief; and
(3) the extent to which recognition of an exemption from the statute would
impede objectives sought to be advanced by the statute. Pacific Press, 676 F.2d at 1279
(citing Mississippi College, 626 F.2d at 488 (citing Wisconsin v.
Yoder, 406
1
Fremont Christian contends that the following is a list of genuine
issues of material fact that should have precluded a summary judgment: (a) the
bona fides of the religious claim (and whether the practice complained of is
rooted in doctrine); (b) the substantiality of that claim; (c) whether the
Church would be injured in its religious observance and, if so, to what degree,
by imposition of the injunction; (d) whether that degree of injury would
constitute substantial harm to the Church; (e) whether Fremont Christian is an
integral part of the Church, or whether, if so, it is only partly religious;
(f) whether the practice complained of is, in fact, a pretext for discrimination;
(g) whether it is based on a factor other than sex; (h) whether excessive
government-church entanglements would arise from the granting of the
injunction; (i) the nature of a societal interest involved in requiring the
Church to abandon its practice, and the degree of that interest; (j) the
existence, or not, of means less restrictive for realization of that societal
interest, than enjoining and penalizing the Church practice in question.
Issues (a-e) relate to the first part of
the Pacific Press three-part test, that is, the magnitude of the
statute's impact on the exercise of Fremont Christian's religious belief. These
facts (a-e) encompass two critical essentials of a Free Exercise Claim: (a) the
religious reality, i.e., the scope, rootedness, depth and sincerity of the
exercise that is claimed to be absolutely required by a religion, and (b) the
reality and substantiality of the injury which the religion will sustain if a
challenged governmental requirement is enforced.
We find, upon a de novo review of the
record, that there are no genuine issues of material fact as to "religious
reality." The district court and the EEOC both concede the religious
reality of the policy of providing health insurance to the head of the
household. Therefore, any "facts" relating to religious reality are
undisputed. Summary judgment was also properly granted on the issues relating
to the "substantiality of the injury" to the religion. The district
court found that the substantiality of the injury to the religion would be
minimal. As discussed infra, we conclude that this finding is correct.
We uphold the district court's finding on
issue (f) that Mrs. Frost's demonstration of the employer's justification as a
pretext for discrimination, was so conclusive that as a matter of law Fremont
Christian could not justify or rebut it. See Muntin v. State of California
Parks & Recreation Dept., 671 F.2d 360, 362 (9th Cir. 1982); Gerdom
v. Continental Airlines, Inc., 692 F.2d 602, 609 (9th Cir. 1982), cert.
denied, 460
Finally, we conclude that issues (g-j)
were properly decided on summary judgment because they were questions of law.
(PAGE 1368)
(1) Magnitude of
Statute's Impact upon Exercise of Religious Beliefs
In EEOC v. Pacific
Press Publishing Ass'n, 676 F.2d 1272 (9th Cir. 1982), the plaintiff, an
employee of a religiously affiliated publishing house, had two complaints: (1)
she was being denied monetary allowances paid to similarly situated male
employees, and (2) her employment was terminated in retaliation for filing
charges under Title VII.
Addressing the first
complaint, this court held that requiring Pacific Press to refrain from
discriminating against the plaintiff, as required by Title VII, does not
violate Press's free exercise of its religious beliefs. Pacific Press, 676 F.2d at 1279. This
court reasoned that "preventing discrimination can have no significant
impact upon the exercise of Adventist beliefs because the Church proclaims that
it does not believe in discriminating against women or minority groups, and
that its policy is to pay wages without discrimination on the basis of . . .
sex . . . . Thus, enforcement of Title VII's equal pay provision does not and
could not conflict with Adventist religious doctrines,
nor does it prohibit an activity 'rooted in religious belief.'"
Similarly in the
present case, Pastor Goree, the head of the Fremont Assembly of God Church,
stated: "The Church, believing as it does, in the God-given dignity and
the special role of women, could not, without sin, treat women according to
unfair distinctions." This would indicate, as it did in Pacific Press,
that preventing the sex discrimination involved in this case should have no
significant impact on Fremont Christian's religious beliefs or doctrines.
Furthermore, Fremont
Christian has previously abandoned a policy of paying the "head of
household" at a rate higher than similarly situated female employees (the
very problem at issue in Pacific Press) because they felt it may have
been illegal to continue to do so. We find this to be evidence that there would
be no substantial impact upon religious beliefs by forcing Fremont Christian to
drop a similar policy of giving heads of household health insurance, to the
exclusion of similarly situated women. Finally, the female employees at Fremont
Christian are eligible for group life
and disability insurance and the School's wages and other usual
conditions of employment are comparable for all employees, regardless of sex.
The district court held that "if those practices do not undermine the
School's religious goals then it is inconceivable that providing health
benefits to female employees will have the opposite effect." We agree.
(2) Compelling
State Interest
Pacific Press speaks clearly to the importance of eliminating employment discrimination in relation to actions by the EEOC that would have a substantial impact on the exercise of religious beliefs. "By enacting Title VII, Congress clearly targeted the elimination of all forms of discrimination as a 'highest priority' . . . . Congress' purpose to end discrimination is
(PAGE 1369)
equally if not more compelling than other
interests that have been held to justify legislation that burdened the exercise
of religious convictions. E.g., Braunfeld v. Brown, 366
Eliminating the
employment policy involved here would not interfere with religious belief and only minimally, if
at all, with the practice of religion. Because the impact on religious belief
or practice is minimal and the interest in equal employment opportunities is
high, the balance weighs heavily in favor of upholding Fremont Christian's
liability under Title VII for its sexually discriminatory health insurance
compensation program. See Pacific Press, 676 F.2d at 1279.
(3) Least
Restrictive Means
It has been
recognized that although EEOC jurisdiction over religious organizations may
have far-reaching effects should the Commission seek injunctive relief, as in
this case, or monetary damages against a religious employer, "the relevant
inquiry is not the impact of the statute upon the institution, but the impact
of the statute upon the institution's exercise of its sincerely held religious
beliefs." Pacific Press, 676 F.2d at 1280 (quoting Mississippi
College, 626 F.2d at 488). Having found the impact on religious beliefs to
be minimal at best, we find this third factor to be satisfied.
C. The Establishment Clause
Fremont Christian
also contends that the injunction granted pursuant to Title VII violates the establishment
clause of the First Amendment because it creates excessive government-church
entanglements. Examining whether Title VII and the Equal Pay Act violate the
establishment clause involves yet another three-part test. See Lemon v. Kurtzman,
403
2
The other two parts of the test for determining the validity of a
statute under the establishment clause are: (1) the statute must have a secular
purpose, and; (2) its principal or primary effect must be one that neither
advances nor inhibits religion. There is no question that Title VII meets the
first two parts of this test.
(1)
Character and Purpose of Institution
Fremont Christian
contends that because the School is an integral part of the religious mission
of the Church to its children, coupled with the highly specialized role of the
teacher, a role it claims to be a ministry, the entanglement implications are
significant.
There is a trilogy of
cases pertinent to this point. First, in
McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553 (5th Cir.), cert. denied,
409
However, the Fifth
Circuit refused to broaden the McClure exemption for ministers to
include the faculty at
"The College's faculty and staff do not function as ministers. The faculty members are not intermediaries between a church and its congregation. They neither
(PAGE 1970)
attend to the religious needs of the faithful nor instruct students in
the whole of religious doctrine."
Finally, in Pacific
Press, this court refused to apply the McClure exemption to an
employee of a religious publishing house. This court held that her duties did
not fulfill the function of a minister, but were more analogous to those of the
support staff and regular faculty at
We find that the
duties of the teachers at
(2) Nature of
Regulation's Intrusion
The intrusion at
issue in this case is an injunction requiring Fremont Christian to comply with
Title VII and the Act. In Pacific Press, the court held that
"neither the judgment in this suit nor Title VII's enforcement mechanisms
result in any ongoing scrutiny of Press' operations." Pacific Press,
676 F.2d at 1282. The presence, here, of another level of government
involvement -- that of the court
issuing an injunction -- does not make this case substantially
different. "The potential for ongoing entanglement or continuous supervision . .
. is the critical entanglement issue . . . ."
(3) Resulting
Relationship between Government and School
This factor relates
closely to the second factor just discussed. Also, it has been held that the
"relationship between the federal government and the College that results
from the application of Title VII does have limits both in scope and
effect."
The partial summary
judgment and the injunction of the district court are
AFFIRMED.