Court rightly rejects forced pay for volunteers

DO minimum wage laws apply to volunteers who don’t expect payment? The answer is self-evident to all but the federal Department of Labor, which took a church to court over the issue.

Grace Cathedral in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, has long operated the Cathedral Buffet on its campus. The restaurant was partially staffed with paid employees, but much labor was provided by church members who volunteered. Church leaders called for volunteers from the pulpit, and church members would even receive phone calls from the pastor, longtime televangelist Ernest Angley, when they didn’t volunteer.

Partly because agency officials considered those efforts heavy handed and coercive, the Department of Labor in 2015 argued the church’s use of unpaid labor at the restaurant violated the minimum wage requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). A district court bought that argument, ordering Grace Cathedral to pay $194,253 in back wages and an equal amount to the Department of Labor in liquidated damages, for a total of $388,507.

But in a ruling last week, a three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took a far more skeptical view. The justices unanimously ruled that “to be considered an employee within the meaning of the FLSA, a worker must first expect to receive compensation,” noting “the volunteers who worked at Cathedral Buffet had no such expectation.” (And 134 congregants said under oath they were not coerced into volunteering.)

“It is undisputed that the volunteers were not economically dependent upon Cathedral Buffet in any way; the parties stipulated as much before trial,” the opinion states. “The volunteers neither expected nor received any wages or in-kind benefits in exchange for their service. They were not even allowed to accept tips from customers. Put simply, there was no economic relationship between the restaurant and the church member volunteers.”

Because the restaurant was technically a for-profit enterprise, the Department of Labor argued the restaurant enjoyed a competitive advantage via unpaid labor. But the judges noted many volunteer activities provided by religious entities are technically “competitors” to other businesses.

“A church van competes with a taxi service,” the opinion said. “A Catholic fish fry competes with a fast food restaurant . ... ”

While FLSA addresses low wages, it does so through economic regulations, the court noted. “The Act does not go so far as to regulate when, where, and how a person may volunteer her time to her church,” the judges declared.

Angley has long embodied the worst stereotypes of televangelism, and one judge specifically agreed in a concurring opinion that Angley’s tactics “were in poor taste.” Yet the judge also noted that “the coercion that matters is not anything that Rev. Angley said to his congregation on a Sunday morning. What matters, rather, is the Department’s own attempt to coerce religious leaders — of any faith — not to exhort their followers on spiritual grounds to engage in conduct that is otherwise legal.”

Indeed. If church members feel unduly pressured to volunteer, there’s a far better solution than intrusive government regulation: Attend a different church.