In Foundation for the Advancement of Catholic Schools, Inc. v. Blair, (CT App., Feb. 25, 2025), a Connecticut state appellate court held that a controversy over interpretation of the Foundation's bylaws can be adjudicated by civil courts. At issue is whether under the Foundation's bylaws, the archbishop can appoint Board members who are not nominated by the Foundation's Governance Committee. The court said in part:
We need not decide whether FACS is a religious organization because, even if we assume, without deciding, that it qualifies as such, we conclude that the claims raised in the plaintiffs’ action can be resolved by applying neutral principles of law.....
We ...must review the plaintiffs’ requested relief and the relevant language of FACS’ bylaws to determine whether resolving this dispute requires an inquiry into purely ecclesiastical questions of religious doctrine or practice or the governance, administration or policies of a church....
Read plainly, the relevant language in the bylaws concerning the procedure for appointments to the board is entirely secular and cannot reasonably be interpreted as implicating issues of religious doctrine or practice or of church government, policy or administration. Put another way, nothing in the pertinent bylaw provision indicates that an analysis of the claims raised by the plaintiffs would require a court to go beyond the secular legal principles governing corporations and the interpretation of bylaws and to resolve impermissible ecclesiastical issues....
Indeed, the defendants concede that the plaintiffs’ claims do not require resolution of doctrinal issues but argue, nonetheless, that because of the archbishop’s status in the [Archdiocese of Hartford], he exercises his ‘‘religious discretion’’ when making decisions as to board appointments, which constitutes a matter of church governance and the governance of a presumably religious organization that a civil court cannot review. This argument fails because the dispositive question is whether the bylaws authorize the board to limit the universe of individuals who may be appointed to the board by the archbishop to only those individuals submitted for nomination by the committee. That question can be determined by applying secular legal principles.
