Has the U.S. Supreme Court heard similar appeals in the past?

The U.S. Supreme Court has grappled with how to decide church property disputes without deciding the underlying religious dispute, recognizing that resolving such disputes on religious grounds would likely violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of religion. The Court has applied neutral principles of property law but, out of deference to the needs (and potential free exercise of religion rights) of religious bodies, has also tried, in a religiously neutral way, to recognize the governing canons and constitutions of religious denominations. Just where the line is between appropriate judicial decision-making and unconstitutional judicial interference with religion in property disputes remains murky, however. The last major decision from the Court on these issues occurred in 1979.

Lower federal and state courts have applied this unclear Supreme Court precedent in different ways. The St. James case coming out of the California Supreme Court highlights that ongoing conflict among the nation’s lower courts, thereby deciding an important issue of federal constitutional law that has not clearly been resolved by the Supreme Court (reason for consideration #3), and done so in conflict with decisions of other state and federal courts (reason for consideration #2).

The California Supreme Court interpreted state law, particularly Corporations Code section 9142, in a way that strongly implicates the Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution. For example, the California Supreme Court’s interpretation of section 9142 as affording to hierarchical religious denominations and “general churches” the unique right to impose a trust for their own benefit over property held in the name of local churches (where trusts in real property normally must be created in writing by the owner), gives hierarchical churches preferential treatment that may well violate the Establishment Clause. Even the Court’s assumption that the Episcopal Church is hierarchical in nature raises serious constitutional issues. These are the kind of important questions of federal constitutional law that frequently result in review by the Supreme Court of the United States.