California Supreme Court to review ruling by lower court in church property case
The Layman Online, September 19, 2007
In a case that potentially may affect many California congregations – including some in the Presbyterian Church (USA) – that seek to be declared the owners of their church properties, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously has agreed to review a lower court’s ruling regarding property issues.
The Sept. 12 decision came in response to a petition by three Episcopal congregations – St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, All Saints’ Church in Long Beach and St. David’s Anglican Church in North Hollywood – that sought the review in an effort to overturn a July ruling by Division Three of the Fourth District of the California Court of Appeals that reversed a 2005 Orange County Superior Court ruling declaring the churches the owners of their properties.
“We couldn’t ask for anything more,” the Rev. William Thompson, rector for All Saints’, told The Long Beach Press-Telegram. “Of course, we don’t know how the court will rule.”
In a statement, Karen Bro, communications director for St. James Anglican Church, said the court’s decision to review the case “has the effect of nullifying the Fourth Appellate District decision, meaning that no trial court or attorney can rely upon it until the Supreme Court ultimately decides the case. This is encouraging news to countless church congregations in California, including Russian Orthodox, Anglican, Presbyterian and Evangelical, who have been threatened with the loss of their property after trial courts began to rely upon Episcopal Church cases.”
Eric Sohlgren, lead attorney for St. James, said in the statement that, “Our petitions asked the Supreme Court to intervene and calm the legal turmoil caused by Episcopal Church Cases. By disregarding almost 30 years of California law where local church property rights and donations of local church members are respected, Episcopal Church Cases adopted a throwback theory where local church property could be confiscated by a large institutional church simply by passing a rule,” he said. “This unanimous and quick decision by the Supreme Court to grant review indicates that it has a strong interest in restoring clarity to the law in how California courts are to decide church property disputes.”
Lynn Moyer, the attorney for the All Saints’ and St. David’s congregations, said in a statement, “We are extremely pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to take this important case to help churches throughout California be able to plan and grow for their future.”
She said that, “The same Founding Fathers who created the U.S. Constitution created the constitution for Anglican churches in the United States following the American Revolution. Congregations were formed and independent long before any ‘diocese’ or ‘national church’ was ever established. It was never intended that these local congregations who are independent corporations put their property in trust for the Episcopal Church. Title to the properties is held by the local congregations. To allow the Episcopal Church to rip these properties away from these congregations after 80 years is wrong, as numerous families who have attended these churches for decades can attest.”
John R. Shiner, the attorney for the diocese, told The Los Angeles Times he was confident the state Supreme Court would affirm the appellate court’s decision.
In its July ruling, Division Three of the Fourth District of the California Court of Appeals reversed the Orange County Superior Court’s prior ruling that the three former Episcopal churches, which ended their affiliation with the national denomination in 2004, did not forfeit their property by changing their affiliation to another province of the Anglican church.
In that ruling, Judge David Velasquez wrote, “No evidence has been presented that a trust over parish property has ever been created under statutory law,” according to The Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Bro, in her statement, said, “This division of the appellate court broke with nearly 30 years of California church property law applying ‘neutral principles’ (i.e., who holds the deed, who bought or donated the property and whether the local church ever agreed to turn over the property) and, instead, ruled that denominations can take over local church property by simply passing an internal rule – even if the local church is separately incorporated, bought and maintained the property, and never consented to the rule.”
She said the three congregations, “as the sole property owners, never agreed to relinquish their property to the Episcopal Church upon changing their affiliation and they have consistently maintained that they have the right to use and possess the property they have owned and maintained for decades.”
As part of the review, the state Supreme Court also will decide whether a California statute (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) that allows courts to expedite cases where people are sued for exercising their free speech rights is applicable to this dispute. The statute subjects to early scrutiny cases filed by large private interests to deter individuals from exercising their political or legal rights to free speech or to petition the government.
Attorneys for the three churches argued that the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Los Angeles are “large, wealthy and powerful religious organizations that sought to stifle these fundamental rights when church members spoke out about their disagreements with the Episcopal Church, including through the act of disaffiliation itself,” according to the statement.