holding that amendments to a corporation’s organizational documents were valid absent “any provision in the corporate documents” permitting TEC to invalidate those amendments or any “Texas law precluding the corporation from amending its articles and bylaws to exclude references” to TEC
How later courts described this case
- holding that amendments to a corporation’s organizational documents were valid absent “any provision in the corporate documents” permitting TEC to invalidate those amendments or any “Texas law precluding the corporation from amending its articles and bylaws to exclude references” to TEC
- recognizing “the differences between ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical issues will not always be distinct, and that many disputes [involving religious organizations] will require courts to analyze church documents and organizational structures to some degree”
- recognizing that Texas courts have a “constitutional duty to decide disputes within their jurisdiction while still respecting limitations the First Amendment places on that jurisdiction”
- observing that the Free Exercise clause severely circumscribes the role that civil courts may play in resolving church property disputes by prohibiting civil courts from inquiring into matters concerning theological controversy, church discipline, ecclesiastical government, or conformity of church members to the church’s moral standards
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice BOYD,
joined by Justice WILLETT, concurring.
I join in the Court’s adoption of the neutral-principles approach to deciding non-ecclesiastical issues, and in its disposition reversing and remanding this case for the trial court to decide under that approach. I do not, however, join in Part III.B. (“Remand”) or Part IV (“Response to the Dissent”) of the Court’s opinion, addressing issues that I believe the Court decides prematurely.
As the Court explains, “[t]he Episcopal Leaders neither pleaded nor urged as grounds for summary judgment that they are entitled to the property on the basis of neutral-principles,” ante at 608, which we hold today is the only basis on which they could be entitled to the property. Moreover, as the Court acknowledges, even under the neutral-principles approach, courts must still defer “to religious entities’ decisions on ecclesiastical and church polity questions,” ante at 596, and “[t]he Diocese did not urge as grounds for summary judgment that amendment of the bylaws and articles of incorporation was ceded to the Diocese so that whether to do so was an ecclesiastical decision and not a secular one.” Ante at 608.
Despite the lack of pleadings and evidence addressing the standards we adopt today, the Court decides that the amendment of the bylaws and articles did not involve ecclesiastical decisions entitled to deference and that the local parish either did not place the property in a trust or, if it did, did not make that trust irrevocable. The Dissent disagrees, concluding that the Episcopal Church and the Diocese should prevail under the neutral-principles approach, either because the amendment of the bylaws and articles remains an ecclesiastical decision to which the courts must defer, or because, under neutral-principles, the parish placed the property in an irrevocable trust.
Both the Court and the Dissent make good arguments, but they are premature. Before we decide these fact-intensive issues, we should afford the parties an opportunity to fully develop their pleadings and the record under the neutral-principles approach that we have adopted today; and we would benefit by affording the courts below an opportunity to consider and decide these matters first. See Lopez v. Munoz, Hockema & Reed, L.L.P., 22 S.W.3d 857, 862 (Tex.2000) (“On an appeal from summary judgment, we cannot consider issues that the movant did not present to the trial court.”) (citing Cincinnati Life Ins. Co. v. Cates, 927 S.W.2d 623, 625 (Tex.1996) and Travis v. City of Mesquite, 830 S.W.2d 94, 100 (Tex.1992)).
For these reasons, I join in the Court’s disposition, reversing and remanding the case for further proceedings in the trial court, but not in its discussion and resolution of issues that the parties have not yet fully litigated.