In Ibhawa v New York State Division of Human Rights, No. 100, 2024 N.Y. Slip Op. 05872, 2024 WL 4884944 (N.Y., Nov. 26, 2024), the New York Court of Appeals held that the the First Amendment’s “ministerial exception” did not deprive the New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR) of jurisdiction over the employee’s hostile work environment claim.
As explained by the court, the “ministerial exception is a doctrine grounded in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” which “protects the right of religious institutions to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine” by supplying an affirmative defense to claims brought under “laws governing the employment relationship between a religious institution and certain key employees.”
The DHR issued an order dismissing plaintiff’s complaint for “lack of jurisdiction” and noted that it “cannot interfere with the right of a church or other religious group, to determine who will work for them in this type of religious role.”
This, held the Court, was error:
DHR’s order dismissing Ibhawa’s hostile work environment claim was affected by an error of law. After noting the parties’ agreement that Ibhawa was “a priest serving as the pastor (Parish Administrator) of a church,” DHR found that his complaint “comes under the ministerial exception (relative to the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution).” On that basis, DHR concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over Ibhawa’s claims. This determination was contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court’s express holding that the “exception operates as an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not a jurisdictional bar” (Hosanna–Tabor, 565 U.S. at 195 n 4, 132 S.Ct. 694).
DHR and the Diocese argue that we should overlook the agency’s error of law because DHR would still have dismissed Ibhawa’s claims if it had properly understood the ministerial exception as an affirmative defense. But the distinction matters. Hosanna–Tabor explained that because the question presented by the ministerial exception “is whether the allegations the plaintiff makes entitle him to relief, not whether the court has power to hear the case,” it is an affirmative defense, not a jurisdictional bar (id. [internal quotation marks and alterations omitted]; compare Hunt v. Hunt, 72 N.Y. 217, 229 [1878] [explaining that subject matter jurisdiction is a “power to adjudge concerning the general question involved” in a dispute, “and is not dependent upon the state of facts which may appear in a particular case”], with Whitlatch v Fid. & Cas. Co. of New York, 149 N.Y. 45, 50, 43 N.E. 405 [1896] [explaining that an affirmative defense that seeks to defeat the “cause of action alleged … must be pleaded and proved by the defendant”]). Thus, once the Diocese raised the ministerial exception as one of several affirmative defenses, the question confronting DHR was not whether the exception limited its power to consider Ibhawa’s claim, but whether any of the Diocese’s affirmative defenses—including the two statutory defenses raised by the Diocese—established that the case could not proceed beyond its current stage (see Hosanna–Tabor, 565 U.S. at 195 n 4, 132 S.Ct. 694).
Because DHR erred in treating the ministerial exception as a jurisdictional bar rather than an affirmative defense, its determination was affected by an error of law. In reaching that conclusion, we express no view on whether any of the Diocese’s defenses are meritorious.
The Court thus reversed the order of the Appellate Division, and remitted the matter for further proceedings.