By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
WASHINGTON (LBM) – Will McRaney, whose lawsuit claims the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention interfered to cause his 2015 firing as executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware and to prevent him from being hired by other ministries, has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to overturn a 2-1 decision against his case by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (issued Sept. 9, 2025 and revised Oct. 28, 2025).
Two of the judges on the circuit court panel, Andrew Oldham (appointed by Donald J. Trump) and Priscilla Richman (a George W. Bush appointee), concluded that McRaney’s lawsuit forces the court to commit an “unconstitutional violation of church autonomy.”
However, the third member of that panel, Irma Carrillo Ramirez (named to the federal appeals bench by Joseph R. Biden), dissented, writing that the principles raised by McRaney “do not implicate matters of faith and doctrine” and so he is “entitled to continue pursuing his secular claims regarding NAMB’s pre- and post-termination conduct.”
Her opinion aligns with McRaney’s Jan. 8, 2026, appeal to SCOTUS that states, “Employing the church autonomy doctrine to deprive individuals of their secular legal rights against a religious institution of which they are not a part in the absence of consent to the authority of that religious institution poses a grave threat to religious liberty.”
BACKGROUND
In April 2017, McRaney filed his lawsuit against NAMB in Mississippi state court. However, NAMB successfully argued to move the case to federal court, specifically the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, which found “this case would delve into church matters” per the “ecclesiastical abstention doctrine” (also known as the church autonomy doctrine) and dismissed the case on April 24, 2019.
McRaney appealed that ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a three-judge panel (Stephen Higginson, Barack H. Obama appointee; Kurt Engelhardt, Donald J. Trump appointee; Edith Clement, George W. Bush appointee) within it ruled unanimously in McRaney’s favor stating, July 16, 2020, that “many of the relevant facts have yet to be developed” and that it was not clear the lawsuit would require the court “to address purely ecclesiastical questions.”
The appeals court panel sent the case back to the district court and instructed it to determine “(1) whether NAMB intentionally and maliciously damaged McRaney’s business relationships by falsely claiming that he refused to meet with [NAMB president] [Kevin] Ezell, … (2) whether NAMB’s statements about McRaney were false, defamatory, and at least negligently made, …; and (3) whether NAMB intentionally caused McRaney to suffer foreseeable and severe emotional distress by displaying his picture at its headquarters … .” The panel also conceded that if further proceedings showed the issue was one of “interpreting religious procedures or beliefs,” the district court should consider NAMB’s motion to dismiss.
In response to this setback from the three-judge panel, NAMB requested (August 2020) a hearing before the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (i.e. an en banc hearing) but was denied by a 9-8 vote (November 2020). NAMB subsequently appealed (February 2021) to the U.S. Supreme Court which denied (July 2021) NAMB’s petition to review the circuit court’s ruling.
The case was then remanded to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, which in August 2023 granted NAMB’s request for a summary judgment and dismissed McRaney’s lawsuit, stating that proceeding with the case would require impermissible inquiry into religious matters – thus setting up McRaney’s second petition to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and now his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
