Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center

857 F.2d 448, 1988 WL 93631
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedSeptember 13, 1988
DocketNos. 87-2393, 87-2425
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 857 F.2d 448 (Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center, 857 F.2d 448, 1988 WL 93631 (8th Cir. 1988).

Opinion

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

This case arises under the religion clauses of the first amendment and requires us to determine whether, on the record before us, a county hospital may hire a chaplain paid with taxpayers’ moneys. Larry Henry Carter, his minor daughter, Courtney De-maris Carter, and Maurice LaBelle filed this civil rights suit against Broadlawns Medical Center, a county hospital, several individuals associated with Broadlawns, and Iowa Interfaith Agency for Peace and Justice, seeking damages and an. injunction prohibiting Broadlawns from hiring a chaplain. The district court1 held that employing the chaplain would be an unconstitutional establishment of religion, were it not for conditions justifying her employment under the free exercise clause. Accordingly, the court permitted the employment, but imposed restrictions on the chaplain consistent with the parameters of a free exercise rationale for her employment. The court also awarded the taxpayers attorneys’ fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (1982). Broadlawns appeals the portion of the order imposing the restrictions and awarding fees. The taxpayers cross-appeal, attacking the district court’s decision to permit Broadlawns to employ a chaplain and its refusal to enjoin various practices related to the chaplaincy. The taxpayers also argue the district court should have granted them damages and more attorneys’ fees. We affirm the district court’s order in part and remand for the district court to modify its order in part and to reconsider the attorneys’ fees award in light of our opinion.

Broadlawns is a county hospital in Polk County, Iowa, which serves the county’s indigent. Broadlawns has a psychiatric ward, which makes up about fifty percent of the inpatient population, and a chemical abuse unit. About a third of the psychiatric patients have been committed involuntarily. Patients in the psychiatric and chemical abuse wards are not free to leave at will, and the less than twenty-five percent of the patients in those wards who are allowed to leave at all must obtain passes. The hospital also confines prisoners of law enforcement agencies who are sent there for treatment.

In the past Broadlawns depended on a volunteer chaplain program under which volunteers would counsel patients and perform other chaplaincy services with no remuneration from Broadlawns. Though there was evidence that Broadlawns sought diligently to obtain sufficient numbers of volunteer chaplains to serve its patients, the program proved inadequate to meet the patients’ needs, because of lack of manpower and lack of experience on the part of the volunteers, expecially in dealing with the large population of psychiatric patients.

In 1984 the Broadlawns Board of Directors voted to employ a full time chaplain. Iowa Interfaith Agency for Peace and Justice agreed to screen the applicants. Larry Henry Carter, Courtney Demaris Carter and John Doe (later identified as Maurice LaBelle) sued as taxpayers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982) and 42 U.S.C. § 1985 (1982) to enjoin Broadlawns from hiring a chaplain and for damages. The district court denied the taxpayers’ motion for a temporary restraining order, Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center, No. 84-800-E (S.D.Iowa Sept. 9, 1985), and Broad-lawns hired its present chaplain, Maggie Alzeno Rogers.

At the trial for the permanent injunction and damages, there was evidence that Rogers has a Masters of Divinity degree and is trained in grief counseling and Clinical Pastoral Education, or C.P.E. She is not an ordained minister, but is a deacon of the United Church of Christ.2 The precepts of C.P.E. are central to Rogers’ practices at [451]*451Broadlawns. Under the principles of C.P.E., a chaplain makes himself available for counseling, but allows the patient to direct the conversations and avoids initiating or guiding religious discussion. Rogers testified:

The philosophy is * * * we do not force your faith understanding on anyone. We do not proselytize, that is a violation of a person who is already in a fairly helpless condition, crisis situation, everything else is already up in the air. So you’re very careful not to violate that person’s human rights.
You listen very carefully to their story, to their faith language, to the symbols that are important to them, and you help them find the resources of faith and the resources of their life whether that be family or their church or their faith or their own history, how have I gotten through hard situations before, and help them to find their own strengthening and own courage. To do anything else than that, according to the philosophy of CPE, is unconscionable.

Tr. 101. She testified that she was trained to counsel atheists as well as theists of all persuasions, since CPE teaches its adherents “to facilitate just human expression whether that person be atheist or something else.” Tr. 119.

Rogers’ duties include calling on patients prior to surgery (whether or not the patient has asked to see her), making herself available for counseling in intensive care and surgery waiting rooms, and making rounds on the psychiatric and medical wards to see patients who have either expressed an interest in seeing her or have been referred to her by hospital staff or volunteer chaplains. She also conducts Christian worship services and a Bible study class in the hospital for those who wish to attend and has conducted religious funerals and administers the sacrament of holy communion when asked to do so. Rogers has developed a job description for her position, which states in part that her job is: “[T]o provide consistent pastoral care throughout the Medical Center, adding spiritual support and counseling to the ongoing healing effort.” Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center, 667 F.Supp. 1269, 1272 (S.D.Iowa July 9, 1987).

Medical witnesses testified to the usefulness of Rogers’ style of chaplaincy from a medical point of view. Dr. Berry Enge-bretsen, Broadlawns’ Medical Director for the Primary Care Unit, testified that the hospital should use a “wholistic” approach to medicine, and that this means that the patient’s “spiritual” as well as bodily, social and emotional states affect his health, “you need to have tools and methodologies to diagnose and treat the entire picture of human health.” Tr. 615. Engebretsen testified that by using the word “spiritual,” he did not mean to imply adherence to “a particular denomination or world religion.” Tr. 615.

The Broadlawns Director of Psychiatry, Dr. Timothy Olson, testified that psychiatric patients often need the support provided by a chaplain and stressed those patients’ inability to leave the hospital at will and the isolation from ordinary sources of support frequently caused by their mental illness itself. He testified that it was necessary to have an experienced chaplain who was able to work with the doctors in caring for Broadlawns’ psychiatric patients, particularly those with religious delusions. The volunteer chaplain program had been unsatisfactory because the volunteer chaplains did not have the special experience necessary for working with these patients. Olson testified:

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Carter v. Broadlawns Medical Center
857 F.2d 448 (Eighth Circuit, 1988)

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Bluebook (online)
857 F.2d 448, 1988 WL 93631, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carter-v-broadlawns-medical-center-ca8-1988.