Day on Torts
Where the Southern Baptist Convention sent a letter stating that a church “may employ an individual with an alleged history of abuse,” the letter named one employee, and the letter asked if the church had received “allegations of sexual misconduct involving” the employee, the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine did not apply to require dismissal of the case. While the TPPA did apply to the case, the plaintiff employee met his burden of showing a prima facie case of defamation and the related torts alleged.
In Garner v. Southern Baptist Convention, No. E2024-00100-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 8, 2025), the plaintiff was a worship pastor at a church affiliated with defendant Southern Baptist Convention (“SBC”). He was also the music director at a Baptist school. The defendant did not exert control over churches affiliated with it, but it could determine whether a church was in “friendly cooperation” with the SBC. That process was controlled by the defendant’s Credentials Committee.
In December 2022, a member of the defendant’s Credentials Committee contacted the plaintiff’s church and stated that it would be sending a letter regarding one of the church’s employees. During subsequent conversations, the Credentials Committee revealed that the allegation involved the plaintiff and later revealed that it was “sexually related.”
In January 2023, a member of the Credentials Committee emailed a letter to the church. The letter stated that the church “may employ an individual with an alleged history of abuse,” and it asked questions about whether the church had “received any allegations of sexual misconduct involving [the plaintiff],” or whether the church was “aware of an allegation of sexual assault of a minor involving” the plaintiff at any of his previous jobs, listing the jobs by church. This letter was also sent to the president of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, who forwarded the letter to the school where the plaintiff worked. The letter did not disclose that the allegation was made on an anonymous online system, did not name a purported victim, or had not been investigated or substantiated. None of this information was relayed verbally either.
The plaintiff eventually lost his job at the school, and the church he had been planning to move to rescinded its employment offer. He and his wife then filed this suit for defamation, defamation by implication, false light invasion of privacy, and loss of consortium.
The defendant filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the case fell within the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. The defendant also moved to dismiss under the Tennessee Public Protection Act (“TPPA”). The trial court refused to dismiss under either theory, finding that neither the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine nor the TPPA applied here. On appeal, the Court of Appeals ruled that the TPPA was applicable, but it nonetheless affirmed the refusal to dismiss.
On appeal, the defendant argued that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine applied, providing a subject matter jurisdictional bar to this case. The Court disagreed. The Court explained that “[w]hen determining whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine bars a defamation claim made against a church official, Tennessee courts must look at whether the slanderous or libelous statements were made during the course of an ecclesiastical undertaking.” (internal citation omitted). “[T]he ultimate question is whether the defamation claims can be determined without…extensive inquiry…into religious law and policy and without resolving underlying controversies over religious doctrine.” (internal citation and quotations omitted). In other words, “the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine is implicated only when the improper conduct that gave rise to the lawsuit is rooted in religious belief.” (internal citation and quotation omitted).
The defendant framed the issue here as whether the church was in friendly cooperation with the SBC. The Court ruled, though, that whether the church was in friendly cooperation had “no bearing on [the plaintiff’s] claims.” The defamation claims related solely to the communication that the plaintiff had been accused of sexual misconduct. Because this communication was not based on religious belief, the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine did not apply.
Next, the Court of Appeals considered the application of the TPPA. The trial court found that the TPPA did not apply here, but the Court of Appeals disagreed. The Court wrote that the letter at issue “undoubtedly relates to health and safety and/or the community’s well-being because it is an inquiry initiated out of an allegation of sexual assault of a minor” by a person employed by a church and a school. The Court ruled that this was a matter of public concern, and that this case thus fell within the scope of the TPPA.
Although the trial court found the TPPA inapplicable, it also found that even if the TPPA did apply, the plaintiffs had “met their burden of proving a prima facie case of each essential element of their claims.” The Court of Appeals agreed.
The Court first reviewed the standard applied by the trial court. The defendant argued that the trial court erred by using the motion to dismiss standard, viewing the allegations of the complaint as true, when analyzing the TPPA petition. The Court of Appeals wrote that a court considering a TPPA petition should “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party seeking to establish the prima facie case and disregard countervailing evidence.” (internal citation omitted). The Court wrote that there was “no meaningful difference between this standard and the Rule 12 standard” applied by the trial court.
Finally, the Court of Appeals considered whether the plaintiff made a prima facie showing of each of his claims. For defamation and defamation by implication, the defendant argued that the plaintiff could not prove that the statement was made “with knowledge that the statement is false and defaming to the other.” (internal citation omitted). According to the defendant, because an anonymous online complaint had in fact been made, the statements were true and the plaintiff could not prove defamation. But the Court noted that a statement is not defamatory as a matter of law “only when the statement is not reasonably capable of any defamatory meaning and cannot be reasonably understood in any defamatory sense.” (internal citation omitted).
Regarding the verbal statements and letter in this case, the Court wrote:
Read in context, a person of ordinary intelligence could understand these statements to mean not that a single recent anonymous allegation had been made against Mr. Garner, but instead that Mr. Garner was “an individual with an alleged history of abuse” dating back to the time when Mr. Garner had been employed at Englewood Baptist Church, approximately a decade before the anonymous allegation at issue was made to [the online system]. The statements in the Letter as published “would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which” a full explanation of the facts known to the Appellants at the time the Letter was sent would have produced. Accordingly, truth is not available as an absolute defense to the Appellants in this case. The trial court did not err in finding that Mr. Garner established a prima facie case for the second element of his defamation and defamation by implication claims.
(internal citation omitted).
In relation to the false light claim, the defendant argued that the plaintiff could not show that it gave “publicity” to the statements, as the letter was sent to only two people. The plaintiff argued that the special relationship exception applied to satisfy the publicity requirement, and the Court of Appeals concurred. The Court wrote:
The special relationship exception “is both justified and appropriate in that a disclosure to a limited number of persons may be just as devastating to a plaintiff as a disclosure to the general public.” In this case, the subject matter of the Letter was an allegation of sexual assault of a minor against Mr. Garner, who was employed as a worship pastor at Everett Hills and was a music minister at a Baptist affiliated school. The Letter was sent to the senior pastor at Everett Hills, who was directly responsible for the hiring and firing of Mr. Garner, and to the president of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. Given the subject matter of the statements and the individuals to whom the Letter was sent, there is no doubt that the disclosure to these two individuals may be just as devastating to Mr. Garner as would be a disclosure to the general public. Accordingly, the special relationship exception applies in this case, and the trial court did not err in finding that Mr. Garner satisfied the publicity element of his false light claim.
(internal citation omitted).
Based on these findings, the Court reversed the ruling that the TPPA did not apply, but it affirmed the refusal to dismiss under either the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine or the TPPA.
This opinion is a good read for defamation and false light litigants. It analyzes several important issues—application of the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine to a defamation case, defamation based on a defamatory meaning, and the special relationship exception to large-scale publication for a false light claim.
This opinion was released four months after oral arguments in this case.