NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. ”“ September 12, 2007 ”“ The California Supreme Court today unanimously granted the petitions by St. James Anglican Church, Newport Beach, All Saints’ Church, Long Beach, and St. David’s Anglican Church, North Hollywood, to review the Fourth Appellate District decision of Episcopal Church Cases.
The grant of review 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.
“Our petitions asked the Supreme Court to intervene and calm the legal turmoil caused by Episcopal Church Cases. By disregarding almost thirty 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,” said Eric Sohlgren, lead attorney for St. James Church. “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.”
“We are extremely pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to take this important case to help churches throughout California be able plan and grow for their future,” said Lynn Moyer, counsel for All Saints’ and St. David’s. “The same founding fathers who created the United States 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.”
In July 2007, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three, 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. This division of the appellate court broke with nearly thirty 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.
St. James, All Saints’ and St. David’s, 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.
The Supreme Court also granted review to decide whether a California statute which allows courts to expedite cases where people are sued for exercising their free speech rights, known as the anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) 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.
* * *
A Brief Recap
The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles brought lawsuits against St. James, All Saints’ and St. David’s Anglican Churches and their volunteer board members in September of 2004. Subsequently, the national Episcopal Church intervened into the lawsuits against the three local church corporations and their volunteer board members.
On August 15, 2005, the Honorable David C. Velasquez of the Orange County Superior Court ruled in favor of St. James against the complaint brought by the Diocese of Los Angeles. In October 2005, Judge Velasquez issued a similar ruling in favor of All Saints and St. David’s. The Diocese of Los Angeles appealed the rulings to the California Court of Appeal.
In August 2005, the Complaint in Intervention filed separately by the national Episcopal Church (“TEC”) was still pending in the Orange County Superior Court.
In Fall 2005, the Court granted the three Churches’ challenges to TEC’s original Complaint in Intervention, but gave TEC an opportunity to amend the Complaint (but only if it could do so in good faith). TEC filed a First Amended Complaint in Intervention, which rehashed many of the church-rule arguments the Court had already rejected in prior rulings. The three local churches filed another challenge (called a demurrer) asking the Court to dismiss the First Amended Complaint without further leave to amend on the ground that even if all of the factual allegations were true, they did not state a legal wrong under California law. TEC also appealed that ruling to the California Court of Appeal.
In July 2007, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three, in an opinion authored by Presiding Justice David G. Sills, reversed the Orange County Superior Court’s prior ruling that three church corporations which disaffiliated from the national denomination did not forfeit their property. This division of the appellate court broke with nearly thirty years of California church property law, and Division Two of the Fourth Appellate District, by ruling that general churches 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.
In August 2007, the three churches filed petitions with the California Supreme Court to settle a church property dispute case that affects countless churches and their members throughout California.
Excellent! One thing all of us can agree on is that this needs to be resolved once and for all.
Terrific news!
This made my day!
A very good sign!
Whoopee!!
And gulp goes Schori…..
There is a link to the California Courts System, http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=0&doc_id=484283 that gives an opportunity for a variety of e-automated mail notifications for this case.
Oops, make that [i]automated e-mail notifications[/i].
And gulp goes Schori…..
a big presumption…
I doubt anybody on either side is surprised.
No source for the article is given. Is this an in-house T19 article?
Sidney, this is an email letter from the senior and junior wardens of Saint James to the “Parish Family.”
[blockquote] 9. Brian from T19 wrote:
And gulp goes Schori…..
a big presumption…
Never trust ale from a God-fearing people – Quark on ST:DS9
[/blockquote]
And this is from a guy whose tagline quotes a Ferengi. 😉
For those not in the know, a Ferengi
is a Star Trek (Deep Space Nine) character whose culture is “… characterized by a mercantile obsession with profit and trade and their constant efforts to swindle people into bad deals. They are also known for their business acumen and for exploiting females.”
Quite appropriate!! All said in jest, Brian from T19. See, you can’t be ALL bad if you like Star Trek!
This is just an agreement to review the decision, it doesn’t mean that the case WILL be overturned. Brad Drell gives a good analysis on his site. Basically, the encouraging sign for the conservatives is that the court agreed to review the decision (which is typically not done if the court is happy with it). However, on the flip side, is that the California appellate districts have contradictory decisions in this area of law, and so the California Supreme Court may have felt the need to step in a resolve the question once and for all.
Still, I’d have to say that the omens from this are much better for the conservatives then for the liberals. But having said that, I am reminded of the timeless adage “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
I suspect that the two conflicting Court of Appeal decisions played a key role in the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review. If so, then granting review in itself provides little clue to how the Supreme Court will decide the case.
Brian: If TEC loses this in the California Supreme Court, they will have just taken a serious body blow in their intimidation campaign. The California Supreme Court is one of the more influential of the state courts. The CSC has not reviewed the lower court rulings that have favored the individual churches, they have only agreed to review the one decision that favored the national church heirarchy. So, I do think that 815 and Beers must be troubled by this development.
“Never trust ale from a God-fearing people”?
How idiotic. Monks have always made the best beer!
“The California Supreme Court is one of the more influential of the state courts”
That may well be; it’s certainly the most prominent. But a key California trust rule (that a trust is revocable unless the grantor specifies that it is irrevocable) is the opposite of the rule prevailing in most states.
Concur with 13-15. The split in the appellate courts was likely decisive. But given that the appeal has been accepted, that our Supremes are pretty conservative, and that the more favorable (to appellants) follows existing decisions, the advantage seems to have shifted back to ST. James et al.
Although I am happy with this, I do not agree that either side is necessarily quaking or smiling.
For one thing, it will all be state by state, case by case, year by year.
A long haul . . . a very long haul.
And I think both sides are settled in for that.
Mathes. Bruno. Barry. Hear footsteps? Got yer checkbooks ready? You are going to spend a lot of your parishoners money. And then you’re going to lose. Enjoy.
Brian, I agree with your assertion that it’s a good thing that this will be settled once and for all. Do you have any sense of the likely outcome? If so, why? Just curious.
Bill
I think that if the California Supremes rule in favor of St James with a well reasoned decision it will set a precedent that will chill TEC. Beers etc. won’t care because they will represent TEC and raid the TEC cash supply.
One thing that we all need to remember is this: the decision-making progress in this case will take a long time still, and even if the CSC rules in the orthodox favor, you can be sure that TEC will try to appeal this to the USSC (on federal constitutional grounds). Also, unless the USSC would at some point require one national rule, this case would only affect California, and much time would be needed for its influence to spread.
In other words, even though this MIGHT be encouraging in the LONG term, the reality is that much of the Anglican realignment will already have happened before the practical benefits of this case are felt.
I still think that the key to success in keeping church properties for the orthodox will be in what the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Camp Allen bishops do in the next 3 months. We must hope for the following:
1. The Camp Allen bishops team up with Rowan Williams to argue in favor of Communique compliance. This leads to a bitter division within the HoB between the liberal ideologues versus the Camp Allen and moderate bishops.
2. The liberal ideologues narrowly win the vote to ignore the Communique, and do so in a Spongian “in your face” manner. The HoB becomes a bitterly divided group.
3. The ABC disinvites all non-Windsor TEC bishops from Lambeth, declaring that they have walked away, but warmly welcomes the new Camp Allen/moderate alliance of bishops.
4. The liberal ideologues attempt to bring presentments against the Camp Allen leaders leading to the Camp Allen/moderate alliance holding what it terms to be a special TEC General Convention.
5. The liberal ideologue/815 crowd challenges this, arguing that they are the true GC and it all goes to court. The courts then, use the Preamble to find that the Camp Allen GC is the true TEC GC because only they are in communion with Canterbury.
6. The heirarchical church argument used by Sauls and Beers suddenly is turned against the liberal ideologues, and they are left without properties, without money, without any means of coercion, and without very many parishioners.
#16
Monks( Franciscan Monks) in my area make thousands of great fruitcakes every year to generate income for the monastery. They are wonderful. Wished they did beer too!