Florida court invokes ecclesiastical abstention doctrine in defamation case

I mentioned last month the ministerial exception doctrine that is at issue in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC. The Court has long held that religious organizations have the freedom “to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” That includes the employment of their ministers, which is at issue in Hosanna-Tabor. It also shields religious organizations from liability for alleged defamation associated with moral judgments about an individual’s behavior.

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More recently—as in last week—a Florida court invoked the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine to dismiss the case of Allen v. Holmes, in which the plaintiff accused a church pastor of spreading lies about her in an effort to remove her from the church community. But, as Howard Friedman at the