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CUYAHOGA FALLS — Televangelist Ernest Angley has closed the Cathedral Buffet, weeks after a federal judge ordered him to pay more than $388,000 in damages and back wages to employees who the U.S. Department of Labor found worked as unpaid volunteers.
The buffet’s website simply states that “Starting April 18, the Cathedral Buffet will be closed to the public.”
“We are now closed to the public. We’ve always kept our prices low so whole families can afford dinner out,” said a woman who answered the phone. “We have never made a profit, but we can’t do it without volunteers.”
The restaurant opened in 1971 adjacent to the Rev. Rex Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow. In 1994, the Cathedral was sold to Angley’s ministry and rededicated as Grace Cathedral. He continued to operate the buffet.
U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson wrote that testimony at a trial held in October and November showed that Angley and his managers at Cathedral Buffet encouraged members of his church to work at the buffet without pay. The for-profit restaurant used volunteers to save money and the volunteers felt pressured to provide free labor, meaning they should have been paid for their work, Pearson wrote.
“... The volunteers’ work was clearly integral to the Buffet’s operations, in that they did work that was necessary to the operation of a restaurant, such as cleaning, bussing tables, stocking the buffet, chopping vegetables, and operating the cash registers,” the judge wrote. “It is hard to fathom that a restaurant could operate without such work being completed.”
The Labor Department filed suit against the 95-year-old televangelist and the buffet in 2015 following an investigation spurred by an article in the Akron Beacon Journal. Its lawsuit said Angley and the buffet violated the Fair Labor Standards Act through its use of volunteers and did not document the volunteers’ work.
Angley maintains he and the buffet staff did nothing wrong and that the claims put forth by the government violate the First Amendment.
The Labor Department also cited Angley in 1999 for the same thing. The buffet paid $37,000 in back wages at the time and agreed to comply with labor laws going forward.