Members of the Alabama Supreme Court sided on Friday with the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (AWFC) and declined to order a disaffiliation vote at Auburn United Methodist Church.
A coalition of members of the Auburn United Methodist Church filed a lawsuit in 2023 Lee County to allow the congregation to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church and establish the congregants as the sole owners of the church's property.
The suit was filed by the Auburn Methodist Coalition, Inc., composed of individual members of the Auburn United Methodist Church, some of whom serve on various church committees.
The suit claims the AWFC "has seized assets, closing the Church to preclude individuals associated with the Congregation from using the Properties." The UMC allegedly did this due to a "trust clause" found within the UMC Book of Discipline, defined as "the instrument for setting forth the laws, plan, polity, and process by which United Methodists govern themselves."
According to the ruling, the AWFC moved to dismiss the coalition's complaint, arguing, among other things, that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine deprived the trial court of subject-matter jurisdiction over the Coalition's claims. The trial court denied the AWFC's motion to dismiss, and the AWFC petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus directing the trial court to dismiss the Coalition's claims based on the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.
In a ruling on Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court granted mandamus relief to the AWFC.
"Because the only issue ripe for this Court's consideration is whether the trial court may compel a congregational vote on disaffiliation, and because § 10A-20-2.03 does not enable the trial court to order such a vote, we conclude that the trial court erred in denying the AWFC's motion to dismiss in this case. We therefore grant the mandamus petition and direct the trial court to dismiss the complaint," members of the Alabama Supreme Court wrote.
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sarah Stewart, Associate Justice Greg Shaw, and Associate Justice Kelli Wise recused themselves from the ruling.
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