In Tracy v. O'Bell, (PA Super., Nov. 5, 2021), a Pennsylvania state appellate court held that the ministerial exception doctrine requires dismissal of a tortious interference with contract suit by Father Tracy, a Catholic priest, against three influential lay members of the Catholic parish which employed Tracy. Tracy alleges that these members made false and defamatory statements to parish members and to the bishop in order to have him removed from his position after he discovered unexplained amounts of parish cash in a file cabinet under defendants' control. The court said in part:
[T]he First Amendment provides special protection to communications regarding the selection and retention of religious ministers.... [O]ur result does not insulate lay people from liability from defamatory statements against clergy. Nor do we deprive clergy of the ability to seek to redress all civil wrongs committed against them by lay people. We have no occasion to address those questions. Appellant’s complaint is very specific—he alleges that Appellees, through their communications with the local bishop and others, sought and successfully procured Appellant’s removal from ministry. Our holding is correspondingly narrow—Appellant’s allegations are inextricably intertwined with his removal from ministry, and therefore the trial court properly sustained Appellees’ preliminary objection based on the ministerial exception.
