CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An appeals court on Monday overturned a federal judge's ruling that a buffet owned by Cuyahoga Falls televangelist Ernest Angley violated federal law by having members of his flock work at the for-profit restaurant as unpaid volunteers.

A three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that members of Grace Cathedral church who worked at Cathedral Buffet had no expectation of being paid.

It overturned Youngstown federal Judge Benita Pearson's ruling that ordered Angley and the buffet to pay church members for the time they worked and for damages and sent the case back to the lower court.

(You can read the full ruling here or at the bottom of this story.)

The Labor Department filed suit in 2015 against the 96-year-old televangelist and the buffet following an investigation spurred by an article in the Akron Beacon Journal. Its lawsuit said Angley and the buffet violated the Fair Labor Standards Act through its use of volunteers and did not document the volunteers' work.

Pearson wrote in a March 2017 ruling that trial testimony showed Angley and his managers at Cathedral Buffet encouraged members of his church to work at the buffet without pay. The for-profit restaurant used volunteers to save money and the volunteers felt pressured to provide free labor, meaning they should have been paid for their work, Pearson wrote.

The pastor would suggest that church members were obliged to volunteer at the buffet to serve God and that not volunteering there would be the same as failing God, Pearson wrote.

She ordered Angley and the buffet to pay more than $388,000, half of which was back wages, the other half in damages. The buffet, which Angley said never made a profit, closed its doors in April 2017.

Senior Judge Eugene Siler, writing for the 6th Circuit panel, wrote that the threshold for fair labor cases such as the one brought against Angley and the buffet is whether workers expect to be paid. In this case, they did not, the panel ruled.

And while the Labor Department said the workers were coerced into working at the buffet for free, the type of coercion required for such a ruling is economic, "not societal or spiritual," Siler wrote.

"After all, the giving of one's time and money through religious obligation is a common tenet of many faiths," Siler wrote. "For instance, the Bible calls upon Christians to 'use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms.'"

The Labor Department also cited Angley in 1999 for the same thing. The buffet paid $37,000 in back wages at the time and agreed to comply with labor laws going forward.

Bill Chris, an Akron attorney representing Angley and the buffet, said he was pleased with the court's decision and said he wished it was the conclusion Pearson had reached last year.

He said in an additional emailed statement that the 6th Circuit's decision "protects religious and other civic-minded organizations from government overreach" and said the buffet operated to give church members an opportunity to reach out to the public.

An email sent to the Labor Department seeking comment was not immediately returned.