In Sails v. Weeks, (AL Sup. Ct., April 5, 2024), the Alabama Supreme Court by a vote of 8-1, without an opinion for the majority, affirmed the dismissal of a suit challenging the use and disposal of church property. Defendants contended that plaintiffs are not members of the church and thus could not bring suit on its behalf. Justice Mendheim filed a concurring opinion, saying in part:
[I]t is inaccurate to attribute the genesis of the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine to the First Amendment. The delicacy with which courts approach church-dispute cases arose more organically from America's history of seeking to disentangle church denominations from state governance...
I believe that our invocation of the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine should come from a desire to protect religious freedom rather than an unfounded fear that religious ideas might taint our civil jurisprudence....
The Sails plaintiffs argued that the heart of this dispute concerns the alleged mismanagement or misuse of church property. However, I believe that the Sails plaintiffs' property allegations are a proxy for asking the courts to decide who controls the church -- an issue our courts lack the means and expertise to decide....
... "[T]he nature of the underlying dispute" is whether the Sails plaintiffs, who stopped attending the church several years ago, are still members of the spiritual church, who are the ones that ultimately control the incorporated church and the property it holds. In short, there is no way around the fact that, in this case, a decision concerning the use of the church property implicates the spiritual church because church membership is a spiritual concern.
Justice Sellers filed a dissenting opinion, saying in part:
Defendants ... moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing, in part, that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring an action on behalf of Union Baptist because, they claimed, Union Baptist was no longer a recognized legal entity under Alabama law because of the official name change that occurred in 2017....
... [C]hanging the name of a corporation, amending an organizational document, or reforming a deed involves the use of our civil legal system that by its very nature is not ecclesiastical. The issue in this case then is who has the authority to act on behalf of the organization? And, after identifying that issue, the question then becomes whether secular courts can decide that issue or whether that decision should be left to some ecclesiastical authority? Because we have no ecclesiastical courts with enforcement authority, I am uncertain how the issue can be decided without court intervention.
