Banks v. St. Matthew Baptist Church

In this case we must decide whether a pastor may use the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause to shield him from tort liability for allegedly defamatory statements he made about the church’s trustees at a congregational meeting. While the pastor acknowledges the non-religious nature of his statements, he contends the setting in which they were made and their relationship to church governance places the trustees’ defamation claim outside the jurisdiction of civil courts under the First Amendment. The circuit court dismissed the claim, and the court of appeals reversed. We hold the circuit…