In 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court released two cases involving property disputes that were fueled by the schism in the United Methodist Church. In Ex parte Alabama West-Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of a local congregation that sought a declaratory judgment that the congregation, not the United Methodist Church, was the owner of the real property. One month later, in Aldersgate United Methodist Church of Montgomery v. Alabama West-Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (Aldersgate), the same court unanimously ruled against 44 Methodist churches that sought a court order allowing them to vote on whether to leave the United Methodist Church (UMC). While the votes were unanimous in both cases, the rationales were not.
Ex parte Alabama West-Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church
Harvest Church-Dothan (Harvest Church) had been a member of the Alabama West-Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (AWFC). In 1999, Harvest Church received legal title to the land on which it would build its church building. The UMC Book of Discipline required a trust clause to be inserted in every member church’s deed, providing that the local church held the property in trust for the denomination. However, no trust clause was inserted into this deed. Instead, the land was conveyed to the “Trustees of Harvest United Methodist Church.”
In 2019, after years of internal disagreement over the issue of homosexuality, the UMC’s General Conference approved paragraph 2553, which allowed congregations to leave the denomination with their property if they met certain financial and procedural obligations. In 2022, Harvest Church sued the AWFC, seeking a declaratory judgment that it owned the real property. Harvest Church also stated that it may or may not vote to disaffiliate from the UMC in the future. The congregation voted in 2023 to leave the UMC, and Harvest Church conceded that it was not following the procedure set forth in paragraph 2553. The AWFC moved the trial court to dismiss the action, claiming that the trial court lacked jurisdiction because this was an ecclesiastical dispute. The trial court denied the motion to dismiss, and the AWFC petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus.
In a 7-0 decision authored by Justice Greg Cook, the Alabama Supreme Court denied the AWFC’s petition. Justice Cook’s opinion first wrestled with the threshold question of when civil courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate church-related disputes, noting that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution places limitations on a civil court’s jurisdiction. Justice Cook concluded: “Under this Court’s well-established precedent, then, civil courts can properly exercise jurisdiction to adjudicate church-related disputes as long as those disputes can be resolved (1) based on ‘neutral principles of law’ and (2) without resolving a religious controversy (that is, an issue of ‘“religious practice or doctrine”’).” Applying that principle to the case, Justice Cook reasoned that all Harvest Church had asked the court to do was adjudicate a property dispute, which is not an ecclesiastical question, and that the AWFC failed to demonstrate that adjudicating that issue would require getting into religious questions. Justice Cook’s opinion was joined by Justice Tommy Bryan, Justice Jay Mitchell, and Special Justice Chris McCool.
Chief Justice Tom Parker concurred in part and concurred in the result. While agreeing that the courts could adjudicate this dispute because, under the court’s precedents, the question presented was solely a property question, the Chief Justice took a much more limited view of what a civil court may consider than the main opinion did. The Chief Justice objected to the scope of the majority opinion, noting that no party had asked the court to overhaul its church-dispute jurisprudence, and he likened the majority’s new test to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lemon test. The Chief Justice agreed that civil courts have jurisdiction over civil cases but not ecclesiastical cases, but he argued that most cases involved “mixed” questions. The Chief Justice argued that “a civil court likely does not have jurisdiction in mixed cases if the underlying dispute is ecclesiastical in nature.” The Chief Justice urged courts to “proceed with extreme caution, because they navigate a veritable minefield whenever they involve themselves in church matters.” Finally, the Chief Justice emphasized that the jurisdictional limitation on civil courts comes from the longstanding belief of the American people that civil and ecclesiastical governments’ respective jurisdictions are different because church and civil government serve different roles under God.
Finally, Justice Will Sellers issued an opinion concurring in the result. Justice Sellers argued that “once Harvest used the civil legal system to file its deed and organizational documents, it consented to have secular law applied to its filings and, thus, opened the door to have any property dispute resolved pursuant to neutral principles of law.” He conceded that if “the question presented in this case involved a vote on theological matters or the approval of a doctrinal test for membership, the trial court would have no jurisdiction.” But in this case, he reasoned: “In any dispute regarding the ownership of real property, only civil courts can analyze the actions of an organization to confirm that the laws were properly followed, that the organization’s actions were duly authorized, and that a public filing accurately reflects the exercise of such authority.”
Special Justice Christy Edwards concurred in the result, without writing. Justices Greg Shaw, A. Kelli Wise, Brady Mendheim, and Sarah Stewart recused themselves.
Therefore, although the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 7-0 in Harvest Church’s favor, the justices advanced three rationales for doing do.
Aldersgate
In Aldersgate, 44 United Methodist Churches in Alabama sought to leave the UMC under paragraph 2553, which was set to expire on December 31, 2023. But in June 2023, the UMC changed its disaffiliation procedures and denied these churches the chance to leave the denomination. On October 31, 2023, the churches filed a complaint against the AWFC, seeking among other things an injunction requiring the AWFC to let the churches vote on disaffiliation. The trial court dismissed the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the churches appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court.
In a 6-0 per curiam decision, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling. The court rejected the churches’ argument that it could apply neutral principles of law to adjudicate the dispute. The court reasoned that “the churches’ central claims turn entirely on the interpretation of ¶ 2553 and whether their efforts to leave the UMC were consistent with that church law. Under existing First Amendment law and our precedent, that interpretive issue constitutes an ecclesiastical question that courts do not have jurisdiction to decide.”
Justice Cook, joined by Chief Justice Parker, concurred specially. Justice Cook agreed that the courts did not have jurisdiction to decide this case, but he noted that he sympathized with the churches’ plight. Quoting Justice Scalia, he noted that a judge who likes every decision he reaches is a bad judge. Justice Cook quoted one UMC clergyman who claimed that the UMC’s last-minute change of procedure was like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. However, because of the jurisdictional limitations on the court, Justice Cook concluded that the churches’ only remedy was with the UMC’s ecclesiastical tribunal.
Justice Tommy Bryan, joined by Justice Jay Mitchell, also concurred specially. Justice Bryan noted that he shared Justice Cook’s concerns. He questioned whether changing the exit procedure was fair, but he concluded that “because the churches’ claim relies solely on ¶ 2553 of the UMC’s Book of Discipline, this case involves an ecclesiastical matter over which, pursuant to controlling precedent, we do not have jurisdiction.”
Justice Brady Mendheim issued a short concurrence in the result, citing his recent special writing in Sails v. Weeks. In that case, Justice Mendheim had provided a thorough historical analysis on the limits of civil courts’ authority to adjudicate ecclesiastical disputes. He had argued that cases that appear on the surface to be mere civil disputes must be determined by the nature of the underlying dispute. However, he argued that if such cases are found to be ecclesiastical in nature, then a court should avoid adjudicating them under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. Thus, while Justice Mendheim did believe that courts have subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate such disputes, he argued that the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine provides that courts should not adjudicate them.
Justice Will Sellers concurred in the result without an opinion. Justices Shaw, Wise, and Stewart recused themselves.
Conclusion
In the span of a little over a month, the Alabama Supreme Court resolved two apparently similar United Methodist church disputes two different ways. The key difference between them was this: Ex parte Alabama West-Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church presented only a property question, and Aldersgate presented centrally an ecclesiastical question. Therefore, whether the Alabama Supreme Court had jurisdiction to adjudicate these claims depended on the nature of the questions presented.
But although the justices were unanimous in each case as to the judgments, their rationales were different. On the one hand, Chief Justice Parker and Justice Mendheim both leaned towards the side of limiting the civil courts’ jurisdiction. However, they appeared to disagree over whether these matters should be classified as a subject-matter jurisdiction problem. On the other hand, Justices Sellers and Cook leaned more towards the side of allowing the courts to exercise jurisdiction as long as the questions involved were not religious in nature. The views of the justices who recused themselves in these cases remains to be seen.
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