Rank and File

Former Salvation Army officer charges that charity’s policy on pay for married couples violates her civil rights

For four years, Wendy Spearin served as a lieutenant in the Salvation Army. But she never drew a paycheck.

Instead, in keeping with a longstanding policy at the giant social-service charity, Mrs. Spearin and her husband, Gary Spearin, who also was a Salvation Army lieutenant until they left the organization last March, received a joint salary, which was paid biweekly to Mr. Spearin.

As a result, says Mrs. Spearin, who from 1995 to 1999 helped run three Salvation Army centers in Florida, she has no official tax records of her employment at the charity. It’s a predicament that she says has hampered her attempts to obtain bank loans to purchase a car and a piece of land on the Florida coast.

What’s more, says Mrs. Spearin, who is 31, upon reaching retirement age she will not be eligible to receive Social Security benefits that she would have accrued during her time with the Salvation Army had she received a salary in her own name.

Mrs. Spearin says she and her husband ultimately left the charity not because of the pay policy, but because the frequent transfers that they were required to make — three moves in four years — took a toll on their two young children.

Still, last month, she filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that the charity’s pay policy violates Title VII of the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

“I have no work history, I have no Social Security tax records, I cannot establish credit for myself,” Mrs. Spearin says. “It’s going to take me years to correct the damage that’s been done.”

The Salvation Army says it pays its married officers jointly because of “Social Security benefits” and other tax advantages that such an arrangement holds, according to Lt. Col. Tom Jones, the charity’s national communications director. However, he declined to reveal what those advantages are, saying he could not discuss the matter because of the EEOC claim. Commissioner John Busby, the national commander of the Salvation Army, was out of the country and not available to comment.

Ordained ministers are considered by the government to be self-employed, and therefore may choose not to pay Social Security taxes. Regardless of that option, several lawyers who specialize in employee benefits, as well as officials at the Social Security Administration who were asked about the joint-pay policy, said that they were uncertain as to the potential advantages of paying officers jointly.

Paul Mourning, a lawyer for the Salvation Army, says Mrs. Spearin’s claim has no legal merit.

“The principles and the policies that the Salvation Army uses to establish its relationships with its male and female officers are absolutely consistent with the law,” he says.

Like all Salvation Army officers, Mr. Mourning says, Mrs. Spearin was also an ordained minister at the charity. Because the Salvation Army is a religious organization, protected under the First Amendment, Mr. Mourning says, it is exempt from Title VII with regard to how it compensates its ministers.

In fact, he says, a similar case involving the Salvation Army’s pay policy helped establish the legal basis for the exemption nearly three decades ago.

That case, McClure v. Salvation Army, dealt with a female officer who took the charity to court after she was discharged for complaining that she received less compensation than did male officers of equal rank.

In 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the Army, concluding that the charity was a religious organization and that “Congress did not intend, through the non-specific wording of the applicable provisions of Title VII, to regulate the employment relationship between church and minister.”

Godwin J. Essien, a lawyer who is representing Mrs. Spearin, says that although his client was a minister in the Army, the duties that she and her husband performed were administrative in nature, not spiritual, and that therefore her claim is valid under Title VII.

“Mr. and Mrs. Spearin performed managerial functions. They did not perform as ministers,” Mr. Essien says. “And the decision to discriminate against them is not a religious one — it’s a business one.”

Mr. Essien adds that he advised his client to pursue her case because the courts today are more likely to favor equal treatment of women than they were in 1972.

Recent cases, however, demonstrate that the issue is still a matter of debate, says Jeffrey P. Ayres, a Baltimore lawyer who specializes in employment litigation and who has represented religious institutions.

“If you were talking about custodial employees, it’s pretty clear that the ministerial exception would not apply,” Mr. Ayres says. “But there’s been a fair amount of case law recently applying ministerial exception to religious teachers and to church musicians.”

For example, in a case called Starkman v. Evans, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit used the so-called ministerial exception to dismiss a case brought by a choir director against the United Methodist Church.

But last fall, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a Jesuit seminarian could bring a Title VII claim of sexual harassment against the Roman Catholic Church.

“It’s an issue that may need to go to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Ayres says.

A ruling against religious institutions could set a dangerous precedent, he adds. “Once the federal government gets its nose under the tent, then all of the religious organization’s practices can be subject to scrutiny and all of its employment decisions can be subject to second-guessing by the government.”

Despite the legacy of the McClure case, the Salvation Army’s joint-pay policy is apparently not widely known. Gordon Raley, the executive director of the National Assembly of National Voluntary Health & Social Welfare Organizations, of which the Salvation Army is a member, said that he was unfamiliar with the policy and that it had never been raised as an issue within the umbrella group.

And Diane Winston, a research fellow at the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University, who last year published a detailed history of the organization, says that she was unfamiliar with the policy.

But, Ms. Winston adds, “I have heard women say that there is a glass ceiling for them, and I have heard women say that their careers are tied to their husbands’.”

Indeed, a Salvation Army officer who marries must marry another Salvation Army officer or relinquish his or her officer status. What’s more, husband and wife always hold equal rank and are promoted jointly.

The Salvation Army is unconventional in other ways as well. Although it is a religious organization, it maintains a quasi-military structure. Its ministers are known as officers and sport military-style uniforms, and its churches are known as corps community centers. Officers’ ranks include lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and commissioner. Non-ministers who subscribe to the organization’s doctrines are called soldiers.

To become an officer, candidates must undergo two years of full-time training at one of four Army schools around the country. Upon graduation, they are ordained as ministers and commissioned as lieutenants.

Although the Salvation Army is an evangelical organization, it is perhaps better known for the myriad social services it provides to hundreds of thousands of needy individuals each year. The charity’s mission is “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.”

It is also famous for its annual red-kettle holiday fund-raising drives. And the charity is indeed a formidable fund raiser. For seven years in a row it has claimed the No. 1 spot in The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400 — the annual ranking of the nation’s largest charities by the amount of money they raise. In 1998, the charity raked in $1.2-billion in private donations.

Says Mrs. Spearin: “They’re relying on public donations for support, yet they’re not being completely honest.”

Mrs. Spearin says she and her husband attended the officers’ school in Atlanta together, and even took a class that explained the pay policy. However, she says, she was never informed about potential disadvantages of the policy.

“Suppose I was divorced or my husband suddenly died. Where would that leave me?” says Mrs. Spearin.

Such questions prompted her to begin pursuing the issue. She says she tried to persuade her superiors to discuss the possibility of changing the policy but was rebuffed.

To test the implications of the policy, she attempted to obtain bank loans to buy a car and property on her own but found that she could only get approval when she applied jointly with her husband.

Salvation Army officials refused to talk about details of the policy and how it would affect women in such circumstances.

However, one lay employee at the charity, who asked that her name not be used, says Salvation Army officers generally view their work as voluntary service, for which they receive an allowance.

“If you go into a career with that sense of vocation, knowing what the ramifications would be, then that’s a choice that you’ve made for yourself,” she says.

The employee adds, “In some ways, honestly, maybe women get the shaft when it comes to the policy, but I don’t think you can say that any woman in the year 2000 goes into it not knowing that.”

Still, Mrs. Spearin, who now works as a paralegal, says she hopes her action will prompt the organization to reconsider its compensation policy.

“I think they need to move with the times,” she says. “For them to say it’s about the separation of church and state, that’s pretty pathetic.”