Judge says law favoring PCUSA in property cases is probably unconstitutional
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 27, 2006
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, who had issued rulings that partially supported the property trust clause of the Presbyterian Church (USA), now has raised questions about the constitutionality of the law he had cited in making those decisions.
“The court can think of no plausible purpose for the legislation except to give hierarchal churches a more advantageous rule for determining the revocability of trusts made for their benefit than any other beneficiary of such a trust has,” said Judge David Yaffe in an interim ruling in the case of Thomas Lee v. the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Lee is a member of First Presbyterian Church in Torrance, Calif. The majority of the congregation, formerly the largest Korean congregation in the PCUSA with 2,700 members, voted to leave the denomination and claimed ownership of the church’s property.
Lee’s case, in which he asks that Section 9152 (c2) (2) of the California Corporations Code be declared unconstitutional, is an adjunct to the lawsuit filed by the Presbyterian Church (USA) against the majority at Torrance. Both cases are expected to go to trial by late spring.
In previous rulings, Yaffe had issued rulings that seemed to affirm Section 9152 (c2), which says:
- “No assets of a religious corporation are or shall be deemed to be impressed with any trust, express or implied, statutory or at common law unless one of the following applies: Unless, and only to the extent that, the articles or bylaws of the corporation, or the governing instruments of a superior religious body or general church of which the corporation is a member, so expressly provide.”
But in a Feb. 16 ruling, the judge said Lee “would more likely than not prevail on the merits of the issue whether Corporations Code section 9142 (c2) (2) is unconstitutional on its face …”
Yaffe’s ruling is important because it reflects a change in his own view of California property trust law. He had previously ruled in favor of the denomination and against Torrance on Torrance’s petition for an injunction to prevent the congregation’s minority from using the church property.
In the earlier rulings, Yaffe concluded that the local congregation could not revoke the denomination’s property trust clause because of the provisions of state Corporations Code Section 9142 (c2) (2).
That section was enacted in 1980 in the aftermath of a 1979 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that called on lower courts to apply “neutral principles of law” in settling church property disputes. Realizing their hierarchal property claims were threatened by neutral principles, denominations lobbied state legislatures to adopt laws protecting their claim on local church property.
But in a decision that was affirmed by the California Supreme Court, a state appellate court ruled in a Methodist dispute in 2004 that another state law, Probate Code 15400, allowed a congregation to revoke a denominationally imposed property trust requirement.
The appellate court ruling against the United Methodist Church said, “[W]e hold that (1) subdivision (c)(2) of Corporations Code section 9142 does not authorize a general church to create a trust interest for itself in property owned by a local church simply by issuing a rule declaring that such a trust exists, and (2) a local church’s creation of a trust interest in favor of the general church, including a trust interest created by the local church’s agreement to a general church’s rule calling for the local church to hold property in trust for the general church, may be revoked by the local church unless the local church has expressly declared that trust to be irrevocable.” But the Methodist ruling did not declare Section 9142 (c2) (2) unconstitutional.
Yaffe’s ruling was not the final word, and he did not flatly declare Section 9142 (c2) (2) unconstitutional. He continued to impose the temporary injunction which allows the denominationally loyal faction to hold services and meetings at Torrance, noting that “there are simply no facts before the church which make such relief necessary, or equitable, at the OUTSET of the case.” (emphasis Yaffe’s)
He elaborated: “There is no evidence before the court that defendant has or threatens to interfere with Mr. Lee’s right to use the real property to worship as he pleases, or to otherwise interfere with his free exercise of his religious rights.”
Yaffe’s Feb. 16 ruling encapsulated the events in other pretrial decisions – both in Lee’s case and in the PCUSA’s lawsuit against the majority at Torrance.
“In a prior case involving the same local congregation and the same national church, this court granted to the national church a preliminary injunction prohibiting the local congregation from transferring or encumbering the congregation’s real property without the consent of the national church, but denied the right to bar members of the local congregation from using the church property as a place of worship or taking over the governance of the local congregation or selecting the pastor of the local congregation contrary to the wishes of the members thereof.”
In the conclusion to his Feb. 16 ruling, he added, “Cases involving disputes over religion are cases in which the court should tread lightly and should act only when necessary to protect the rights of one litigant or the other under neutral principles of law. Absent any threat that the defendants will act unilaterally to deprive the plaintiff of any such rights during the course of this litigation, there is no reason for the court to order either party to do, or not to do, anything at this time.”