Texas high court pauses dismissal of Cindy Clemishire’s lawsuit

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Monday, September 21, 2026

The Texas Supreme Court has temporarily halted a lower court’s dismissal of Cindy Clemishire’s defamation lawsuit against Gateway Church, founder Robert Morris and other church leaders, pausing the case while it considers whether to take it up.

The court granted Clemishire’s unopposed emergency motion for a stay on Sept. 18 — one day after their attorneys filed a petition asking the court to review and overturn the Fifth Court of Appeals’ dismissal of most of Clemishire’s civil claims. The stay temporarily halts the Fifth Court of Appeals’ dismissal order while the Supreme Court considers the mandamus petition. It does not decide the case or permanently restore the dismissed claims, and the court has ordered responses to the petition by Oct. 19.

The stay follows the Dallas-based Fifth Court of Appeals’ decision last month to dismiss Clemishire’s lawsuit, ruling that proceeding with the case would violate the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, which prohibits civil courts from getting involved with matters of doctrine or church governance. Appeals Court Justice Mike Lee found in his opinion that Dallas County District Judge Emily Tobolowsky “abused her discretion” when she denied Gateway Church’s motion last November to dismiss the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds.

In their 158-page petition for writ of mandamus, filed Thursday, attorneys for Clemishire — including Texas Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jeff Leach — warned that allowing her lawsuit to be dismissed under the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine could create an unprecedented and dangerous legal shield for religious institutions.

“The First Amendment is one of the greatest protections ever written into law, and we should fiercely defend it,” Leach, an attorney with Gray Reed, said at a press conference outside the court. “While the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine represents an important protection of religious liberties, it has never equated to full blanket immunity — not in Texas, and not anywhere else in America. Protecting a known sexual predator is not theology. Defaming and damaging the victim, a non-church member, is not church doctrine. Religious freedom is sacred. Protecting child predators is not.”

Morris, who founded Gateway Church in 2000, resigned in June 2024 after 55-year-old Clemishire accused him of sexually abusing her for 4.5 years in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12. At the time, Morris was serving as a traveling evangelist.

Morris was indicted in March 2025 on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child by a multi-county grand jury in Oklahoma in connection with his actions. The former megachurch pastor pleaded guilty to the charges last October and was sentenced to six months in jail along with a 10-year suspended sentence. Morris, who is also required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, completed his jail term and was released from custody in March.

The defamation lawsuit, filed by Clemishire and her father, Jerry Lee Clemishire, in June 2025, seeks more than $1 million in damages, alleging that Morris and Gateway Church leaders publicly mischaracterized the abuse she suffered as a consensual “relationship” with a “young lady” instead of the sexual assault of a child after the abuse was made public in 2024.

In an affidavit dated Nov. 6, Clemishire said statements made by both Morris and former Gateway Church elders minimized her sexual assault, which caused her ongoing attacks from Gateway Church followers and members of the public.

“For more than four decades, I have lived with the consequences of what Robert Morris did to me and what happened when powerful people chose to protect him instead of the child he abused. I found my voice because I believed the truth mattered and that speaking it could protect someone else. Never did I fathom that finding my voice and sharing my story would result in public ridicule, lies, and defamation from the very church that my abuser pastored,” Clemishire said at Thursday’s press conference.

“Now I am asking the Texas Supreme Court to make clear that the doors of justice do not close simply because the institution involved is a church. Religious freedom should protect our faith. It should never protect those who abuse children or those who help shield them from accountability. This fight is bigger than me. It is for every survivor who has ever been told to stay quiet to protect an institution, a reputation, or a person in power.”

When she denied Gateway Church’s motion to dismiss Clemishire’s lawsuit last November, Judge Tobolowsky rejected the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine defense invoked by the church and elders John D. “Tra” Willbanks, Kenneth W. Fambro II, and Dane Minor, making clear that she was not convinced internal communications and statements made by the church about Clemishire’s sexual abuse were protected under that doctrine.

In their petition, Clemishire’s attorneys asked the Texas Supreme Court to answer three questions: “1) Does the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibit the trial court from exercising jurisdiction over relators’ intentional-tort claims? 2) Is determining what a church knew, and how it came to know it, inherently ecclesiastical and categorically beyond judicial inquiry? And 3) Does a church’s right to autonomy with respect to internal management decisions extend to outsiders who never united with, or even attended, the church?”

“For decades this Court, as well as numerous lower courts of appeal, consistently balanced these principles. This case, however, concerns a complete demarcation. While the court of appeals sought to apply the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine, its holding upsets the carefully circumscribed balance and provides protection far beyond the Constitution’s strictures,” Clemishire’s attorneys argued in the petition.

“The United States Supreme Court and this Court have emphasized the First Amendment does not grant a ‘general immunity from secular laws,'” they added. “The First Amendment ’embraces two concepts — freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be. Conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society.'”