Gateway Church Wins Defamation Appeal
Appeals court dismisses Clemishire’s claims, citing church autonomy under First Amendment.
Gateway Church and its leaders won their appeal to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against them by Cindy Clemishire.
Clemishire, who was sexually abused as a child by Gateway’s founding pastor, Robert Morris, claimed Morris made false and defamatory statements about her when he said he had been “involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” and claimed the Clemishire family had “graciously forgiven [him].”
Gateway Church (photo via church website) / Insert of Cindy Clemishire (video screenshot)
She also claimed that statements made by Gateway and its leadership in the days after Morris’ abuse became public in June 2024 were false and defamatory.
After Morris resigned a few days after the abuse became public, Gateway’s leadership confirmed the truth of Clemishire’s allegations. The leaders issued another statement explaining that the elders did not have all the facts about the abuse or Clemishire’s age when they issued their earlier statement.
“Gateway and its current leaders have consistently expressed their sympathy for Cindy Clemishire and their grief over the abuse she endured,” Ron Breaux, an attorney for Gateway Church, said. “Nothing about this decision diminishes what happened to her.”
Texas’ Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas determined that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, grounded in the First Amendment’s religious protections, deprives the trial court of jurisdiction over the claims because they involve the church’s internal investigation and communications.
“As the Court’s opinion confirms, this case was never about Gateway,” Breaux said. “While Gateway grieves and laments Robert’s child sexual abuse of Cindy, that abuse happened 20 years before Gateway was founded. Its current elders did not know of Robert’s crimes until Cindy told her story, at which point they immediately conducted an investigation and acted to ensure that no one complicit in hiding Robert’s past remained in Church leadership.”
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He added that Clemishire did not sue Gateway Church over Morris’ abuse itself, but over statements its leadership made about that abuse.
“[T]he First Amendment draws an important constitutional boundary: secular courts cannot sit in judgment over how a church investigates its clergy, governs itself or communicates about the character and conduct of its religious leaders. This decision strongly reaffirms that principle of church autonomy and makes clear that it protects every church, regardless of how it chooses to organize and govern itself,” he said.
The Court of Appeals wrote that Clemishire’s claims would require the court to inquire into Gateway’s internal affairs and would “risk judicial entanglement with a religious question or doctrine.”
It cited a Texas Supreme Court case that determined a claim that “questions a church’s investigation into allegations of a pastor’s misconduct, the church’s reporting of its investigation and the allegations, the church’s actions determining the truth of the allegations, and the church’s communications with the public regarding the investigation and allegations” is barred by the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.
The appellate court directed the trial court to dismiss the claims within 30 days.
Claims against Morris
Not all the claims against Morris were dismissed, according to a memorandum opinion issued by the Fifth Court of Appeals.
The court dismissed Clemishire’s defamation claims based on Morris’ June 2024 statements about the abuse under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine because they were made during a church investigation.
However, the court treated differently a May 30, 2025, affidavit Morris filed in a separate lawsuit. Because Morris did not raise before the trial court his argument that the affidavit was protected by judicial proceedings privilege, the Court of Appeals could not consider it.
The court did dismiss all claims against Morris’ wife, Deborah, based on the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine because her communications were part of the same church investigation.
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