Decision resets wage suit and voids two appeals over missing bonds
A California appeals court reinstated wage claims against the San Francisco Zen Center and dismissed two leaders’ appeals for not posting undertakings.
On November 21, 2025, the Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District, Division Five, reversed a trial court’s summary judgment for the San Francisco Zen Center in a wage-and-hour case brought by former Work Practice Apprentice and staff member Annette Lorenzo. The trial judge had relied on the First Amendment’s ministerial exception to dismiss Lorenzo’s minimum wage and overtime claims. The appellate court held the ministerial exception does not automatically bar wage claims where deciding those claims will not require courts to resolve ecclesiastical questions. It emphasized that, absent evidence of ecclesiastical entanglement, wage-and-hour claims can proceed.
The Zen Center is a nonprofit religious corporation operating three training temples – City Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch Farm. It generates income by renting rooms at all three temples to overnight guests and conference and event space at Green Gulch Farm to corporations such as Facebook and Google. Tassajara is open to the public; guests may use the hot springs and baths and need not practice Buddhism. The organization offers residential training programs in which participants live at a temple full time as a monk. Work practice is described as an integral and indivisible part of Zen...
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