San Francisco Zen Center Tassajara Zendo
SAN FRANCISCO - A state appeals panel has ruled a woman should be allowed to use California employment laws to sue the Buddhist center that formerly employed her, despite a constitutional religious exception recognized by the courts that generally prevents courts from interfering in the internal affairs of religious organizations.
Annette Lorenzo’s litigation targets the San Francisco Zen Center, along with Linda Galijan and Mike Smith, former executives at one of the largest Sōtō Zen Buddhist churches in North America. According to court records, Lorenzo joined the Center’s work practice apprentice program in 2015, became a staff member in 2017 and was asked to leave in March 2019, at which point her monthly stiped was $198.33.
Lorenzo filed a claim with the Labor Commissioner in July 2020, which resulted in an award against all three defendants of nearly $150,000 in unpaid minimum and overtime wages, liquidated damages, interest and penalties. All the defendants asked San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East to review the matter anew, but the Center pledged to hold the full amount of the damages in a filing that didn’t include Galijan or Smith. The Labor Commissioner then moved to dismiss their appeals on the grounds they failed to post an undertaking, a motion East denied.
The defendants then moved for summary judgment, invoking a 2010 decision from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Alcazar v. Catholic Archbishop of Seattle, in which the First Amendment’s "ministerial exception" stymied a minimum wage lawsuit. Lorenzo responded by pointing to U.S. Supreme Court opinions, including 1985’s Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor, which addressed religious organizations engaged in commercial activities.
After Judge East granted summary judgment, Lorenzo took her case to the California First District Appellate Court. Justice Danny Chou wrote the panel’s opinion, filed Nov. 21; Justices Mark Simons and Gordon Burns concurred.
Chou said the instructive opinion is a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he said was expressly limited to “an employment discrimination suit brought on behalf of a minister, challenging her church’s decision to fire her.” In 2020, the court ruled on Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and found Catholic teachers couldn’t sue because, “despite their lack of clerical titles or formal training,” Chou wrote, their jobs involved vital religious duties.
Lorenzo’s case is distinct, the panel held, because although she went through the required religious training and practice to join the staff, her job functions with the Center going back to apprenticeship involved housekeeping, janitorial and food service roles, largely in support of its operation of the Tassajara Mountain Center, which is open to the public for overnight stays and access to hot springs, and at the City Center where she worked as a librarian.
Chou said the guiding precedent aims to keep courts from becoming excessively entangled in religious affairs while allowing for intervention in areas that don’t “raise an ecclesiastical concern.” Lorenzo didn’t dispute the legal framing of her as a minister, nor challenge her termination or seek court-mandated reinstatement, he noted, adding the Center offered no explanation for its assertion “the enforcement of California’s wage-and-hour laws would inevitably result in excessive entanglement with religion.”
Reaching the opposite conclusion, the panel said, might offer legal protection to “religious leaders who have fraudulently compensated themselves at their church’s expense” or to institutions that breach contracts with employees. Chou said “there is ample evidence that protecting a church’s selection of its ministers was of central importance to our founders,” but nothing in the historical record “to suggest that a minister’s compensation, much less the minimum compensation that a minister should receive to subsist,” was such a concern.
The panel said other Ninth Circuit cases backing the Center’s position contain “little or no analysis” to support “overly broad” interpretations of the ministerial exception and surmised “Lorenzo’s wage-and-hour claims are not tied to the Center’s decision to terminate her employment and do not invade the Center’s autonomy in the selection of its ministers.”
Lorenzo argued that if the ministerial exception is inapplicable, the Center could only prevail by sufficiently raising the affirmative defense of the church autonomy doctrine. The panel agreed with that position and further said the Center has so far failed to bear that burden, while conceding it may be possible at trial to show Lorenzo’s compensation is an ecclesiastical concern.
In addition to reversing summary judgment for the Center, the panel reversed the denial of Lorenzo’s motion to dismiss Smith and Galijan’s appeals as well as the summary judgments in their favor upon finding Judge East lacked the jurisdiction to hear their appeals because they didn’t sign on to the Center’s financial undertaking.
Lorenzo is represented by Annette Kirkham and Theresa Johnson Bischel from the Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
The California Employment Lawyers Association and National Employment Law Project filed a support brief through Clarkson Law Firm.
The Zen Center is represented by attorneys with Foley & Lardner.
