Supreme Court to decide on California property case: CEN 5.15.09

The California Episcopal Church property case is headed to Washington. On May 5 attorneys for St James Anglican Church in Newport Beach announced that they would file a petition for writ of certiorari asking for review from the United States Supreme Court in Washington of the California Supreme Court’s mixed January decision. The California court dealt the Diocese of Los Angeles a defeat holding that church property disputes must be adjudicated under the theory of neutral principles of law — where the court looks solely at the title deeds to determine trusteeship of church property. However, the parish was dealt a defeat by the Court which also held that the Episcopal Church’s 1979 “Dennis” Canon created a trust interest in favour of the diocese in property owned by congregations. The parish will ask the US Supreme Court to decide whether the US Constitution permits the state to favour religious organizations over secular groups, allowing the state to give an exemption to the common law “statute of frauds” doctrine to certain hierarchical denominations. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.