Williams v. Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses

491 P.3d 852

Ria WILLIAMS, Petitioner,

v.KINGDOM HALL OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, Roy, Utah ¹ Respondents.

No. 20190422

Supreme Court of Utah.

Heard November 9, 2020

Filed June 3, 2021

Attorneys:²

Robert Friedman, Amy L. Marshak, Mary B. McCord, Washington, D.C.; Irwin M. Zalkin, Alexander S. Zalkin, San Diego, California; Matthew G. Koyle, John M. Webster, Riverdale; for petitioner

Karra J. Porter, Kristen C. Kiburtz, Salt Lake City, for respondents

Chief Justice Durrant authored the opinion of the Court, in which Associate Chief Justice Lee, Justice Himonas, Justice Pearce, and Justice Petersen joined.

On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals

Chief Justice Durrant, opinion of the Court:

Introduction

¶1 Ria Williams filed an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim based on the manner in which Elders of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses (Church) conducted a disciplinary hearing. Applying the test the United States Supreme Court established in Lemon v. Kurtzman ,³ the district court concluded that the adjudication of this claim would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because recent changes in the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence require further development of the facts and legal arguments presented in this case, we vacate the decision by the district court and remand for additional proceedings. But the fact that we have overturned the district court's dismissal under the Establishment Clause should not be read to mean that an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim under this Clause is not an appropriate subject of dismissal, either generally or in this case. Rather, we vacate this dismissal only so that the district court may assess this case under the Supreme Court's recent modification of its Establishment Clause analysis.

Background⁴

¶2 Ria Williams and her family attended the Roy Congregation of the Jehovah's Witnesses Church. When Ms. Williams was fourteen years old, she met another Jehovah's Witnesses congregant. Initially, Ms. Williams and this congregant began seeing each other socially. But the relationship quickly changed and over the next few months the congregant physically and sexually assaulted Ms. Williams.

¶3 Soon after, the Church began investigating Ms. Williams to determine whether she had engaged in the serious sin of "porneia." According to the Church, porneia is "[u]nclean sexual conduct that is contrary to ‘normal’ behavior" and it includes "sexual conduct between individuals who are not married to each other." As part of this investigation, four Elders in the Church convened a disciplinary hearing to "determine if [Ms. Williams] had in fact engaged in porneia and if so, if she was sufficiently repentant for doing so." Ms. Williams voluntarily attended the hearing with her mother and stepfather.

¶4 At the beginning of the hearing, the Elders questioned Ms. Williams for forty-five minutes regarding her sexual conduct with the other congregant. And after this questioning, the Elders played an audio recording of the other congregant raping her.⁵ While the Elders played the recording, Ms. Williams was "crying and physically quivering." Despite her "crying and protestations to not force her to relive the experience of being raped," the Elders played the recording for "four to five hours," stopping and starting it at certain points to ask Ms. Williams "about what was happening" and "suggesting that she consented to" the sexual acts portrayed.

¶5 As a result of this meeting, Ms. Williams continues to experience distress. Her symptoms include "embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, ... loss of enjoyment of life," and spiritual suffering. As a result, Ms. Williams filed a complaint against the Church for intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress.

¶6 In response to her complaint, the Church filed a motion to dismiss under rule 12(b)(6) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. In the motion, the Church argued that the United States and Utah constitutions barred Ms. Williams's claims for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

¶7 After considering the motions and hearing arguments, the district court dismissed Ms. Williams's amended complaint, ruling that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution barred Ms. Williams's claim. The court ruled that Ms. Williams's claims "expressly implicate key religious questions regarding religious rules, standards, ... discipline, [and] most prominently how a religion conducts its ecclesiastical disciplinary hearings."

¶8 For this reason, the court explained that it was unable to "disentangle" the alleged conduct from the religious "setting and context" in which it took place. So, even though the allegations in the complaint were "disturbing" to the court, it ruled that the Establishment Clause barred the court from adjudicating the claim. Ms. Williams appealed to the court of appeals.

¶9 In a unanimous decision, the court of appeals affirmed the decision and the reasoning of the district court, and Ms. Williams petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which we granted. We have jurisdiction under Utah Code section 78A-3-102(3)(a).

Standard of Review

¶10 "On a writ of certiorari, we review the decision of the court of appeals ... and apply the same standard[s] of review used by the court of appeals. In conducting this review, we grant no deference to the court of appeals’ decision."⁶ When reviewing appeals from a motion to dismiss, we "review only the facts alleged in the complaint."⁷ We "accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true and consider all reasonable inferences to be drawn from those facts in a light most favorable to the plaintiff."⁸ We will affirm a district court's dismissal "only if it is apparent that as a matter of law, the plaintiff could not recover under the facts alleged."⁹ "Because we consider only the legal sufficiency of the complaint, we grant the trial court's ruling no deference" and review it for correctness.¹⁰

Analysis

¶11 The First Amendment states, in part, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."¹¹ The United States Supreme Court has explained that the First Amendment's "first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion."¹² For this reason, past courts have treated the First Amendment as though it "erected a wall between church and state."¹³ On one side of the wall is "freedom" or "independence from secular control or manipulation" for religious organizations.¹⁴ And on the other side, a protection of "temporal institutions from religious interference."¹⁵

¶12 "To safeguard this crucial autonomy," the Supreme Court has "long recognized that the Religion Clauses [of the First Amendment] protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to govern themselves in accordance with their own beliefs."¹⁶ In short, the First Amendment grants religions "power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine."¹⁷

¶13 But it has also long been recognized that "[n]o significant segment of our society and no institution within it can exist in a vacuum or in total or absolute isolation from all the other parts, much less from government."¹⁸ For this reason, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that "total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable."¹⁹ So notwithstanding statements prohibiting the "slightest breach"²⁰ in the wall between church and state, the Supreme Court has conceded that the "wall" between government and religion is more of "a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."²¹

¶14 Yet, despite acknowledging that the First Amendment does not contain "precisely stated constitutional prohibitions," the Supreme Court, in Lemon v. Kurtzman , attempted to establish a three-part test that could be used to evaluate any challenged governmental action under the Establishment Clause: First, the action must have a secular purpose; second, its "principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion"; and third, it must not "foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’ "²²

¶15 The Court applied this test in Lemon . In that case, the Court was tasked with evaluating the permissibility of a government program that provided funding for teachers of "secular subjects" at nonpublic religious schools.²³ Although in a previous case the Court had allowed a state to provide secular textbooks to religious schools (on the ground that it furthered the state's interest in teaching "secular" subjects to all students), the Court concluded that the teacher reimbursement program at issue in Lemon violated the Establishment Clause.

¶16 The Court struck down the teacher reimbursement program because there was no permissible way for the state to verify that the state funds supported only secular education: "[u]nlike a book, a teacher cannot be inspected once so as to determine the extent and intent of his or her personal beliefs and subjective acceptance of the limitations imposed by the First Amendment."²⁴ Rather, the Court reasoned that compliance with the First Amendment would be possible only through a "comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance" of the classrooms in religious schools.²⁵

¶17 The Court explained that such a comprehensive system of enforcement would violate the First Amendment because that "kind of state inspection and evaluation of the religious content of a religious organization [was] fraught with the sort of entanglement that the Constitution forbids."²⁶ In other words, any attempt by the state to...