The California Supreme Court decision has been issued:  In a unanimous decision on the outcome they upheld the appellate court decision which found in favor of the national Episcopal Church and against the local churches.  The majority found that under “neutral principles of law” the property resides with the denomination because the churches agreed from their founding to be part of the greater church and abide by their documents.  (The appellate court used “principle of government” in its reasoning.)

The majority decision, written by Justice Chin, goes on to present the legal rational for this finding.  In a very interesting concurring and dissenting individual opinion Justice Kennard says, and I paraphrase here, “I agree the higher church body gets the property, but you are really stretching California law in finding for neutral principles when this should be based on principle of government.”

So we basically have a unanimous decision, but a 6-1 split on the legal reasoning.

Now some details, and I’ll quote extensively from the very readable introductory summary to the decision.

Near the beginning of the summary it says:

When secular courts are asked to resolve an internal church dispute over property ownership, obvious dangers exist that the courts will become impermissibly entangled with religion. Nevertheless, when called on to do so, secular courts must resolve such disputes. We granted review primarily to decide how the secular courts of this state should resolve disputes over church property.

State courts must not decide questions of religious doctrine; those are for the church to resolve. Accordingly, if resolution of the property dispute involves a doctrinal dispute, the court must defer to the position of the highest ecclesiastical authority that has decided the doctrinal point. But to the extent the court can resolve the property dispute without reference to church doctrine, it should use what the United States Supreme Court has called the “neutral principles of law” approach.

The decision summary continues with this important paragraph, the one Justice Kennard takes issue with:

Applying the neutral principles of law approach, we conclude that the general church, not the local church, owns the property in question. Although the deeds to the property have long been in the name of the local church, that church agreed from the beginning of its existence to be part of the greater church and to be bound by its governing documents. These governing documents make clear that church property is held in trust for the general church and may be controlled by the local church only so long as that local church remains a part of the general church. When it disaffiliated from the general church, the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it.

Within the full discussion the majority say that important in the reasons they were favoring neutral principles is because “that is the [U.S.Supreme] court’s most recent on this subject and, hence, is of critical importance to the instant dispute.”  They also quote the U.S. Supreme Court decision about the dangers of neutral principles including that it requires a court to examine church documents, such as a constitution, for a trust clause but the court must avoid deciding based on any associated doctrine in the document.  And the decision notes that this is the first case the state supreme court has had to consider neutral principles since its development.

Related to this the decision notes that the Appellate decision in this case criticized previous appellate decisions because those decisions used neutral principles when the state supreme court’s previous rulings had used principle of government.  This current decision responds:

We disagree. As explained in the Court of Appeal opinion containing the most thorough examination of this question… the principle of government method… and the neutral principles method… are not mutually exclusive, but can be reconciled. In any event, this court unquestionably has authority to adopt the neutral principles approach. [citations removed for length]

This makes it sound like another reason the majority went with neutral principles was to help set the record straight on the previous decisions.

It is also important to point out that in response to the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision detailing neutral principles the California Legislature, in 1982, added a section to the California Corporations Code recognizing a denominational trust clause.  And the decision reaffirms that under this California statute a hierarchical church can unilaterally impose a trust clause if “the governing instruments of that superior religious body so provide.”  There is an argument in the Episcopal Church that the trust clause was not properly adopted in the first place.  The court literally says that “it is a bit late” to argue that point.

It is also interesting that in the full decision the court points out that most of the decisions in other states have favored the hierarchical church.

In the separate decision, Justice Kennard writes of the majority’s reasoning regarding the California Corporate statute:

But that conclusion is not based on neutral principles of law. No principle of trust law exists that would allow the unilateral creation of a trust by the declaration of a nonowner of property that the owner of the property is holding it in trust for the nonowner. [citation removed] If a neutral principle of law approach were applied here, the Episcopal Church might well lose because the 1950 deed to the disputed property is in the name of St. James Parish, and the Episcopal Church’s 1979 declaration that the parish was holding the property in trust for the Episcopal Church is of no legal consequence.

But under the principle of government approach, the Episcopal Church wins because that method makes the decision of the highest authority of a hierarchical church, here the Episcopal Church, binding on a civil court. This result is constitutional, but only because the dispute involves religious bodies and then only because the principle of government approach, permissible under the First Amendment, allows a state to give unbridled deference to the superior religious body or general church.

In my view, Corporations Code section 9142 reflects the principle of government approach. That statute allows a hierarchical church, such as the Episcopal Church here, through its bylaws to unilaterally impose a trust on the
property of a local member parish. The statute does not state a neutral principle of law; rather, it creates a special principle applicable solely to religious corporations.

In my common sense way of thinking Kennard’s argument makes more sense to me as a path to ruling for the denomination.

Finally, a couple of polity and legal observations from this GA Junkie, who is not a lawyer.

1)  It is interesting that neutral principles was the legal theory that prevailed because one of the internal arguments among PC(USA) denominational people was whether trust clause (neutral principles) versus administrative commission process (principle of government) was a stronger argument.  At least in this state it appears trust clause prevails.  Personally, I favor process.  It seems so much more Presbyterian to me.

2)  In reading through the detailed decision it seems to me that the court has tried to position its decision so that it will be upheld on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, should there be one.  It seems that great effort is taken to lay out the legal history in U.S. Supreme Court decisions to show how this decision is completely compatible with that court’s
existing decisions.  Maybe another reason the majority went with neutral principles.  And being a lowly physical scientist by training, maybe this is what all legal decisions look like.

3)  There are clear winners and losers.  But one of the winners may be those churches which have been already been gracefully dismissed by their presbyteries.  If principle of government had prevailed I could imagine an increase in the pressure to use PJC’s and AC’s at higher levels to chase down and pull back congregations dismissed by their presbyteries.  This decision does, of course, only apply to California.

Lastly, I do expect a lot of spin and discussion on this.  But out of all the responses, I appreciate the detailed and disagreeing analysis of an authentic church lawyer over at Anglican Curmudgeon.  We will see what others have to say.  Stay tuned…

Updates:  A few details I missed the first time around…
1)  The case is not over — If nothing else the cases are sent back to the trial courts.  And if the local churches are unsuccessful there some are suggesting that it will be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

2)  In comments that I am trying to decide suggest a true sense of victory or just making the best of this outcome, some associated with the local churches are happy the majority relied on neutral principles since that is how they were arguing their case.  As the article from VirtueOnline says:

The California Supreme Court today ruled in Episcopal Church Cases that
church property disputes must be resolved by “neutral principles of
law,” not by civil courts merely deferring to the decrees of church
“hierarchies.”

This ruling has wide and favorable impact for
churches throughout California that seek to change their denominational
affiliation. While adopting this “non-religious” method of resolving
property disputes between churches, the Court seemed to defer to the
Episcopal Church’s alleged “trust canon,” which purports to create a
trust interest in church property owned by local congregations.

And the press release from the Episcopal Church quotes the local churches lawyer, Eric Sohlgren:

What’s good about the decision from the perspective of St. James is
that the court has adopted a rule of neutral principles of law in that
church property disputes will be resolved by neutral, nonreligious
factors.

Interesting to see how this goes from here.

3)  And on my commute home last night I heard one radio station give the following “teaser headline” that seems to miss the point of the “neutral principles:”