The Alabama Supreme Court denied a request from Alabama churches to rehear a disaffiliation lawsuit against the United Methodist Church (UMC) on Friday.
The Alabama Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit brought by 48 Methodist churches across Alabama against the UMC in May.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Brooke Reid originally dismissed the lawsuit in November, seeking a vote to disaffiliate with the UMC and retain church property.
The case is one of many brought against the UMC recently after UMC’s Alabama West Florida Conference (AWF) changed the rules in its “Book of Discipline” in 2023, adding additional requirements for local congregations to vote to disaffiliate from the UMC while still retaining church property. The rule change came after a mass exodus of UMC churches over a shifting view within UMC leadership related to homosexuality and homosexual clergy.
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld Reid’s dismissal in May because the lawsuit centers around “ecclesiastical questions.”
Associate Justice Tommy Bryan wrote in his opinion, “By enacting ¶ 2553, the UMC allowed churches the opportunity to leave the UMC and retain their property if they were to leave 'for reasons of conscience'; the churches had a certain period to make their decision. Deep into that period, the Conference adopted a new requirement — one not explicitly contained in the Book of Discipline — making it more burdensome for churches to leave.”
“There is something extremely unsettling about changing the rules during the course of the game. I question whether this process was fair. However, as noted, we simply do not have the jurisdiction to decide this matter,” Bryan said in May.
Associate Justice Greg Cook wrote, “I write separately to express my sympathy for the predicament faced by the churches in this case. In particular, I am concerned by the churches' claim that the Conference unfairly engineered the disaffiliation process to prevent their departure from the UMC.”
Umc Lawsuit Rehearing by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
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