Mark and Kian return to discuss two of the Seventh Circuit's March 2024 opinions.
In Garrick v. Moody Bible Institute, a split 2-1 panel (Judge St. Eve writing and joined by Judge Hamilton, with Judge Brennan dissenting) refused to exercise appellate jurisdiction over a district court order rejecting a motion to dismiss that was based on the church autonomy doctrine. Because they do not end the proceedings, decisions denying motions to dismiss are interlocutory and thus generally not immediately appealable. Under the collateral order doctrine, however, federal appellate courts will hear an appeal from an interlocutory order where the order is conclusive, resolves important questions separate from the merits, and is effectively unreviewable on appeal from the final judgment. The orders that fall into this category often involve "immunities" – such as prosecutorial immunity, sovereign immunity, and qualified immunity. The defendant in this case argued that the church autonomy doctrine recognizes an immunity that triggers the collateral order doctrine. Judge Brennan agreed, but the majority held otherwise, concluding that the church autonomy doctrine does not "confer immunity from trial in every employment discrimination suit."
The second case, Gerlach v. Rokita, addresses a different sort of immunity – sovereign immunity. The plaintiff argued that the State of Indiana violated the Takings Clause by failing to compensate her for interest accrued on her unclaimed property while that property was held by the State. While the unanimous panel acknowledged that the Seventh Circuit has previously held that the Takings Clause requires paying such interest, it rejected the plaintiff's claim: It held that the plaintiff's claims for "monetary relief for past Takings Clause violations ... are, in effect, claims against the State of Indiana itself and thus barred" by "Indiana's sovereign immunity."
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