The U.S. Supreme Court today denied certiorari in
Melhorn v. Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, (Docket No. 16-245, cert. denied 10/31/2016) (
Order List.) In the case, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in an unreported opinion (set out in Appendix 1 to the
Petition for Certiorari), applied the ministerial exception doctrine to bar a wrongful discharge suit by a pastor who was fired after refusing to accept the $600,000-plus portion of a bequest for upkeep of a cemetery that the church no longer owned.