Court: Constitution doesn't protect churches from sexual-abuse suits
By The Associated Press
03.15.02
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court ruled yesterday that churches are not protected by the U.S. Constitution from lawsuits charging sexual abuse by clergy.
The court's rulings came as sexual-abuse scandals have roiled the Roman Catholic Church's Palm Beach diocese and Boston archdiocese.
"The First Amendment does not provide a shield behind which a church may avoid liability" for negligent hiring and supervision of its clergy members, the court said in decisions on two separate cases.
The first case was originally filed by two women who accused the Rev. Jan Malicki of sexually assaulting them from 1994 to 1997 while he worked at St. David Catholic Church in Davie.
The women sued not only Malicki, but also the church and the Archdiocese of Miami, arguing that church officials were negligent in hiring Malicki because they did not do background checks on the priest.
In the other suit, a woman alleged she was seduced by the Rev. William Dunbar Evans after she asked him for marital counseling at Holy Redeemer Episcopal Church in Lake Worth.
She sued Evans, the church, the Diocese of Southeast Florida and its bishop, claiming church officials knew of sexual misconduct in Evans' past, and they were negligent in hiring him.
The high court said both decisions make no judgment on each of the underlying cases. It sent both cases back to lower courts for further proceedings consistent with its opinions.
Messages left after-hours at the offices of the churches' attorneys were not immediately returned. No one answered the phones after-hours at the Miami archdiocese and the Southeast Florida diocese.
Trial and appeals courts had earlier ruled for the churches in both cases, saying the First Amendment bars government from getting involved in decisions by churches under most circumstances, including hiring decisions.
The Supreme Court disagreed yesterday, saying that giving immunity to churches in these types of suits "could risk placing religious institutions in a preferred position over secular institutions, a concept both foreign and hostile to the First Amendment."
Justices said their decision puts Florida in line with the majority of other state and federal court jurisdictions, which have denied giving churches First Amendment protection in similar cases.
Chief Justice Charles Wells, and Justices Leander Shaw, Harry Lee Anstead, Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Ann Quince made up the majority in the Malicki case, while Justice Major B. Harding dissented.
In the Evans case, Shaw, Anstead, Lewis, Pariente and Quince were in the majority, while Wells and Harding dissented.
Harding said in his opinion on the Evans case that allowing negligent hiring and supervision suits against churches "would amount to excessive entanglement of religion by the state."
In the recent cases involving Catholic priests, Palm Beach Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell announced his resignation March 8 after he admitted to molesting a teen-ager at a Missouri seminary more than 25 years ago.
Also former Boston priest John Geoghan has been accused of molesting more than 130 people during his decades in the clergy. He is now serving a 9- to 10-year prison sentence for groping a 10-year-old boy.
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