Brief Episode

Today the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the homophobic Newport Beach congregation of the Episcopal Church may leave the national organization, but can’t the money and run.

The opinion included this lynch-pin:

Although the deeds to the property have long been in the name of the local church, that church agreed from the beginning of its existence to be part of the greater church and to be bound by its governing documents. These governing documents make clear that church property is held in trust for the general church and may be controlled by the local church only so long as that local church remains a part of the general church. When it disaffiliated from the general church, the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it.

Not having followed the whole case and its development, I found the opinion easy to follow.

Not surprisingly, the homophobic people are pretty consistent in trying to use religious freedom and protections to curtail the rights of others.  We’ve seen the fallacious argument that allow marriage equality would somehow impinge upon the religious freedom of militant homophobic activists.  In this case, apparently, the defendant churches seceeding from the Episcopal Church tried to assert what’s known as a SLAPP (short for strategic lawsuit against public participation). Basically, it pre-empts the civil courts from interfering with church business.

The justices decided this was not such a case.

Interestingly, the church vs. state question was raised by Justice Kennard, who’s known for giving thoughtful and separate opinions.

The majority decided in favor of the plaintiff (the national church) using a neutrality principle.  Basically stated, the civil courts can mediate and adjudicate legal strife between churchs by simply looking at the traditional legal disputes (property law, etc.) if there’s no doctrine at issue.

Justice Kennard, on the other hand, affirmed the same winner of the suit by a different basis: the government approach.  This approach allows the civil courts to defer to the highest ranking body in the respective religion.  In this case, the national church beats out individual congregations.

She relied on this basis because the individual congregation had the deed to the property and only twenty years later did the national church write new bylaws claiming ownership indirectly to all its congregations’ possessions.  She reasons that if the neutral approach were maintained, then the national church would lose.

No principle of trust law exists that would allow the unilateral creation of a trust by the declaration of a nonowner of property that the owner of the property is holding it in trust for the nonowner. (California-Nevada Annual Conf. of the United Methodist Church v. St. Luke’s United Methodist Church (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 754, 769.) If a neutral principle of law approach were applied here, the Episcopal Church might well lose because the 1950 deed to the disputed property is in the name of St. James Parish,[1] and the Episcopal Church’s 1979 declaration that the parish was holding the property in trust for the Episcopal Church is of no legal consequence.

But under the principle of government approach, the Episcopal Church wins because that method makes the decision of the highest authority of a hierarchical church, here the Episcopal Church, binding on a civil court. This result is constitutional, but only because the dispute involves religious bodies and then only because the principle of government approach, permissible under the First Amendment, allows a state to give unbridled deference to the superior religious body or general church.