Amicus Curiae Brief — Jasvinder Singh, et al., Petitioners v. Second Judicial District Court of Nevada, Washoe County, et al.

No. 26-157

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

JASVINDER SINGH, et al.,

Petitioners,

v.

SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT

OF NEVADA, WASHOE COUNTY, et al.,

Respondents.

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

to the Supreme Court of Nevada

BRIEF OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP

OF LAS VEGAS AND HIS SUCCESSORS, A

CORPORATION SOLE AS AMICUS CURIAE

IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS

Judith Simon-Kohl

The Roman Catholic

A rchbishop of Las Vegas

and His Successors,

a corporation sole

336 Cathedral Way

Las Vegas, NV 89109

Michael A. Heidler

Counsel of Record

Vinson & Elkins LLP

200 W. 6th Street, Suite 2500

Austin, TX 78701

(512) 542-8400

mheidler@velaw.com

Justin W. A imonetti

David S. Carter

Vinson & Elkins LLP

2001 Ross Avenue, Suite 3900

Dallas, TX 75201

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

September 2, 2026

395345

(800) 274-3321 • (800) 359-6859

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT . . 2

ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

I.

First Amendment Rights Should Not Vary

By Jurisdiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

II. This Court’s First Amendment Jurisprudence

Favors Clear Constitutional Boundaries

Where Ad Hoc Judicial Inquiry Threatens

Fundamental Protected Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

III. The Decision Below Disregards The

Necessary And Inherent Overlap Between

Religious Governance A nd The Civil

Legal Forms Required To Effectuate

That Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

IV. Per m itt i ng T he Decision To St a nd

Jeopardizes First Amendment Protections

By Allowing Regional Legal Traditions,

Cultural Context, And Ad Hoc Judicial

Characterization To Displace A Uniform

Constitutional Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

ii

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES

Cases

Page

Aldersgate United Methodist Church of

Montgomery v. Ala.-W. Fla. Conf. of

the United Methodist Church, Inc.,

411 So. 3d 328 (Ala. 2024) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

All Saints Parish Waccamaw v. Protestant

Episcopal Church in the Diocese of S. C.,

685 S.E.2d 163 (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5

Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wis. Labor

& Indus. Review Comm’n,

605 U.S. 238 (2025) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Church of God in Christ, Inc. v. L.M. Haley

Ministries, Inc.,

531 S.W.3d 146 (Tenn. 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 14

Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth v. Episcopal Church,

602 S.W.3d 417 (Tex. 2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 7

Ex parte Ala.-W. Fla. Conf. of the United Methodist

Church, Inc.,

2026 WL 629584 (Ala. 2026) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Fonken v. Community Church of Kamrar,

339 N.W.2d 810 (Iowa 1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia,

593 U.S. 522 (2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 14

iii

Cited Authorities

Page

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church

& Sch. v. EEOC,

565 U.S. 171 (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Masterson v. Diocese of Nw. Tex.,

422 S.W.3d 594 (Tex. 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 7

NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago,

440 U.S. 490 (1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Our Lady of Guadalupe Sch. v. Morrissey-Berru,

591 U.S. 732 (2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 12

Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of S. C. v.

Episcopal Church ,

806 S.E2d 82 (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Redwing v. Catholic Bishop for the Diocese

of Memphis,

363 S.W.3d 436 (Tenn. 2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 11

Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz.,

576 U.S. 155 (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Tea v. Protestant Episcopal Church,

96 Nev. 399 (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Montgomery v.

Tankersley,

374 So. 2d 861 (Ala. 1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

iv

Cited Authorities

Page

United States v. Stevens,

559 U.S. 460 (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Statutes and Other Authorities

U.S. Const. amend. I . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13,

14, 15, 19, 20, 21

Book of Discipline, Section 2501 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Book of Discipline, Section 2553 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Las Vegas and His

Successors, a corporation sole, commonly referred to as

the Archdiocese of Las Vegas (“ADOLV”), submits this

amicus curiae brief in support of the Petition for a Writ

of Certiorari filed by the Northern Nevada Sikh Society

(“NNSS”).

This Court’s review is imperative to resolve the

question whether the First Amendment permits judicial

entanglement into internal religious governance through

an extension of the neutral principles doctrine beyond its

traditional church property context, where that extension

rests only on a court’s minimal threshold decision to recast

the controversy as one of secular law.

Though the ADOLV and the NNSS differ significantly

in their core beliefs, structures, and doctrines, both exist

and operate within the longstanding First Amendment

protections that afford religious entities the sole right to

decide matters of their leadership, membership, internal

hierarchy, and religious governance free from judicial

interference.

The decision below wholly disregards the First

Amendment boundary protecting church autonomy by

permitting courts to arbitrarily and inconsistently recast

1. Counsel of record for all parties—and Respondents

themselves—received notice at least 10 days prior to the due date

of amicus curiae’s intention to file this brief. Amicus curiae

certifies that no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or

in part and no person or entity, other than amicus and its counsel,

has made a monetary contribution to its preparation or submission.

2

a church autonomy issue, without a defined constitutional

standard, into a secular matter and substitute judicial

judgment for that of the religious institution.

First Amendment protections should not vary by

jurisdiction. Yet they do. Lower courts have adopted

fundamentally different standards both as to what

disputes may be resolved through neutral principles and

as to whether a court may undertake the initial threshold

inquiry at all without the inquiry itself breaching church

autonomy.

Those conf licting standards produce divergent

constitutional outcomes, rendering this Court’s review

imperative to establish both uniform First Amendment

protections through a clear national boundary between

permissible civil adjudication and protected religious

governance, and a consistent standard for determining

whether the threshold inquiry may be undertaken at all.

INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The inconsistent application of First Amendment

protections and church autonomy is best illustrated by

the sharply divergent approaches of the Fifth and Ninth

Circuits. The Fifth Circuit treats church autonomy as a

substantive First Amendment boundary, recognizing both

that state-required corporate forms may embody internal

religious governance and that the very inquiry undertaken

to recast such disputes under neutral principles may itself

burden constitutional rights.

The Ninth Circuit, by contrast, applies an ad hoc

framework that permits neutral principles to invade

3

internal ecclesiastical governance whenever a court can

characterize the matter in secular terms. Under this

existing framework, a simple judicial recharacterization

alone can move an internal church governance dispute

outside the protection of church autonomy, arbitrarily

permitting the court to substitute its judgment for that of

the religious institution on matters of church leadership,

the leadership’s managerial authority, and internal

ecclesiastical decision making.

The same internal governance dispute may be barred

at the threshold inquiry in the Fifth Circuit but allowed

to proceed in the Ninth Circuit where the court renders

the same ecclesiastical decision a neutral corporate

dispute. That approach destabilizes the constitutional

boundary this Court has long maintained between

permissible civil adjudication and the sphere of internal

religious governance protected by the First Amendment:

that religious institutions must remain free from civil

interference in matters of church government, internal

discipline, and the selection and control of those who carry

out the religious mission. See Our Lady of Guadalupe

Sch. v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. 732, 747, 762 (2020); Tea

v. Protestant Episcopal Church, 96 Nev. 399, 403 (1980).

This division also leaves religious entities subject to

materially different constitutional protections depending

on geography and underscores the need for this Court to

clarify the proper limits of inquiry, the application of the

neutral principles doctrine, and its relationship to the

broader protections of church autonomy.

The decision below not only compromises the

freedom of religious institutions of every tradition,

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structure, and size to establish and decide their internal

affairs in conformity with their respective faiths, but

it also raises two additional concerns that warrant this

Court’s intervention. First, it disregards the inherent

overlap between religious governance and the civil

legal structures through which religious institutions

obtain legal recognition, hold property, enter contracts,

conduct financial and other temporal affairs—all matters

necessary to function within civil society. Second, it

enables judges, many of whom are elected and whose

frames of reference are shaped by dominant local

religious traditions, to involve themselves in the affairs

of minority faiths whose governance structures may be

unfamiliar. This Court should grant the petition for a

writ of certiorari.

ARGUMENT

I.

First Amendment Rights Should Not Vary By

Jurisdiction.

First Amendment protections should not vary from

one jurisdiction to another. South Carolina illustrates

the constitutional inconsistency created by an expanded

neutral principles framework. After adopting that

approach in All Saints Parish Waccamaw v. Protestant

Episcopal Church in the Diocese of S. C., 685 S.E.2d 163,

171 (2009), the South Carolina Supreme Court fractured

in Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of S. C. v.

Episcopal Church, 806 S.E2d 82, 93 (2017), over whether

the dispute required civil adjudication or ecclesiastical

deference.

The lack of a governing standard is so pronounced

that judges sitting on the same court, reviewing the

5

same record, applying the same doctrine to the same

dispute can reach materially different constitutional

characterizations of the same controversy. The lead

opinion viewed the controversy as one of “religious law or

doctrine masquerading as a dispute over church property

[and] corporate control.” Id. at 230. Other Justices on

the same court, however, characterized it as an ordinary

property dispute or cautioned against extending deference

to long-established constitutional boundaries. Id. at 246

n.24, 249, 254 n.33, 290.

This deeply divided decision demonstrates the need

for this Court’s intervention to provide lower courts with

a uniform standard governing the proper limits of neutral

principles for consistently resolving issues involving First

Amendment constitutional boundaries.

Even where courts recognize that the threshold

inquiry itself may intrude upon church autonomy, they

remain without a uniform constitutional standard for

determining whether the threshold inquiry itself has

already crossed the First Amendment boundary. In

Masterson v. Diocese of Nw. Tex., 422 S.W.3d 594,

607 (Tex. 2013), the Texas Supreme Court attempted

to establish a principled framework respecting the

constitutional boundary between civil adjudication and

church autonomy. Masterson required deference to

ecclesiastical decisions concerning church polity while

permitting neutral principles to resolve non-ecclesiastical

matters involving land titles, trusts, corporate formation,

governance, and dissolution. Id. at 606-07.

However, this framework necessarily requires a

court first to determine whether the controversy is

6

“ecclesiastical,” without clear guidance for making that

determination without examining the very religious

governance the First A mendment protects. This

creates the paradox that the court may have to cross the

constitutional boundary merely to determine whether the

First Amendment permits it to do so.

This Court has cautioned that even the “very process

of inquiry” into a religious institution’s internal affairs can

“impinge on rights guaranteed by the Religion Clauses.”

NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 502

(1979). Thus, requiring civil courts to determine, case by

case, whether matters of internal religious governance

are sufficiently “ecclesiastical” to warrant constitutional

protection risks drawing the judiciary into the very sphere

from which the First Amendment requires its restraint.

The resulting uncertainty concerning where permissible

judicial characterization ends and unconstitutional

intrusion begins further warrants this Court’s review.

The First Amendment concern over excessive judicial

entanglement is clearly exhibited in Episcopal Diocese of

Ft. Worth v. Episcopal Church, 602 S.W.3d 417, 420 (Tex.

2020). To resolve what was characterized as a civil dispute,

the court necessarily had to enter the ecclesiastical realm

and confront questions of religious identity, affiliation,

authority, and membership before determining which

faction would receive civil recognition as the continuing

ecclesiastical entity entitled to control the property.

The Court admitted it walked a “fine, and often

indistinct, line” in adjudicating church-property ownership

when hierarchical entities disassociate. Episcopal Diocese

of Ft. Worth, 602 S.W.3d at 427. The Court acknowledged

7

that deciding which religious faction was the true church

and which of the faithful remained in good standing

involved ecclesiastical matters requiring deference. Id.

at 432-33.

It nevertheless concluded that, in “applying neutral

principles to the [corporate] organizational documents,

the question of property ownership is not entwined with

or settled by those determinations,” thereby leaving

civil courts to determine which religious body would be

recognized as the continuing ecclesiastical entity entitled

to act in the name of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Id. at 433. That outcome is the very danger that the

Masterson dissent warned against: once an ecclesiastical

controversy is recast as one of corporate status or

property ownership, the characterization itself permits

civil authority to intrude upon the religious autonomy the

First Amendment protects.

The Masterson Court crossed the constitutional

boundary it purported to respect by effectively determining

questions of ecclesiastical identity and authority, including

which religious body would be recognized as the

continuing church and which of the faithful were allowed

to remain members. Those determinations lie at the core

of a religious institution’s constitutional independence. A

civil court cannot assume authority over them merely by

translating or arbitrarily recasting the consequences into

the language of corporate status or property ownership.

See Masterson, 422 S.W.3d at 618 (Lehrmann, J.,

dissenting).

Alabama’s attempted application of the unstructured

neutral principles doctrine provides another example

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of constitutional encroachment upon First Amendment

protections. See Tr inity Presbyter ian Church of

Montgomery v. Tankersley, 374 So. 2d 861, 866 (Ala. 1979).

In 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court recognized that

resolving the Methodist Church’s property dispute would

require the civil court to enter the denomination’s own

ecclesiastical framework and interpret Section 2553 of the

Book of Discipline, which governs the religious process

by which a congregation may sever its ecclesiastical

relationship from the Church. Because that inquiry

would necessarily require judicial examination of internal

Methodist polity and religious authority, the court deemed

the matter ecclesiastical. Aldersgate United Methodist

Church of Montgomery v. Ala.-W. Fla. Conf. of the United

Methodist Church, Inc., 411 So. 3d 328, 333 (Ala. 2024).

Just two years later the same court reached the

opposite conclusion w ith respect to Section 2501,

holding that the Book of Discipline’s trust clause could

be treated as a secular property provision. Ex parte

Ala.-W. Fla. Conf. of the United Methodist Church, Inc.,

2026 WL 629584, at *5 (Ala. 2026). Importantly, the

trust requirement is embedded in the United Methodist

Church’s own governing religious law and reflects its

connectional and hierarchical polity by requiring local

church property to be held for the benefit and mission of

the denomination as a whole.

As the dissent observed, however, the supposed

distinction between a “secular” trust clause and the

“religious” Book of Discipline is difficult to maintain where

the denomination itself regards the trust requirement as

a fundamental expression of United Methodism. Id. at

*11–14 (Mendheim, J., dissenting).

9

The divergent results demonstrate how constitutional

protection can turn on a court’s inherently indeterminate

characterization of the same governing religious document, creating the risk of arbitrary and inconsistent

outcomes and further underscoring the need for a uniform

constitutional standard governing the limits of neutral

principles.

Iowa demonstrates the converse constitutional danger

posed by an indeterminate neutral principles framework.

In Fonken v. Community Church of Kamrar, 339 N.W.2d

810, 816–19 (Iowa 1983), the Iowa Supreme Court first

adopted this Court’s neutral principles approach as the

governing framework for resolving the dispute. Id. at 816.

However, in applying that ostensibly ‘neutral’ framework,

the court deemed the presbytery’s ecclesiastical decision

conclusive and deferred to the church’s determination

concerning the church and its property. Id. at 816–19. The

court reached the same result as the religious institution

under what it characterized as neutral principles. Id.

The dissent exposed the tension in that analysis: that

once the court allowed the presbytery’s ecclesiastical

determination and church polity to dictate the civil

property result, the analysis was no longer truly “neutral.”

Id. at 819–23 (Schultz, J., dissenting). The danger,

therefore, is not merely that courts may reach different

results through different analytical routes. Rather, an

indeterminate neutral principles doctrine can distort

the constitutional boundary in either direction. Courts

may characterize ecclesiastical controversies as secular

to permit civil adjudication or incorporate ecclesiastical

determinations into an analysis labeled neutral. In either

circumstance, the scope of First Amendment protection

10

is left to a court’s threshold recasting of the controversy,

thereby inconsistently and indiscriminately delegating

constitutional rights in the absence of a uniform national

rule.

The dangers of a shifting constitutional boundary

are further illustrated by the Tennessee Supreme

Court, which ostensibly adheres to the neutral principles

doctrine. See Redwing v. Catholic Bishop for the Diocese

of Memphis, 363 S.W.3d 436, 453 (Tenn. 2012). The

Tennessee Supreme Court’s decisions demonstrate the

increasing uncertainty created when courts move beyond

straightforward property disputes into matters of internal

religious governance.

In Church of God in Christ, the lower courts

characterized the controversy as one concerning church

“control” and dismissed it on ecclesiastical abstention

grounds. Church of God in Christ, Inc. v. L.M. Haley

Ministries, Inc., 531 S.W.3d 146, 149–50 (Tenn. 2017).

The Tennessee Supreme Court, however, viewed the same

dispute differently, recasting it as a property controversy

susceptible to a hybrid neutral principles analysis,

provided that the civil court accepted the church tribunal’s

determination of who served as pastor. Id. at 155, 162–73.

That qualification underscores the instability of

the framework. Although the court characterized the

dispute as susceptible to neutral principles, its analysis

still depended upon deference to an ecclesiastical

determination concerning church leadership. Likewise, in

Redwing, the court treated negligent hiring, supervision,

retention, and certain fiduciary-duty claims against the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Memphis as potentially secular

11

when framed as breaches of duties owed to children rather

than as inquiries into church doctrine. Redwing, 363

S.W.3d at 450–55.

These divergent applications reveal a deeper

constitutional concern. The same underlying controversy

may fall outside civil jurisdiction when understood as

a matter of religious governance yet become judicially

cognizable when recast as one of property, tort, or

corporate law. Absent a clearly defined constitutional

boundary, the scope of First Amendment protection may

depend upon how an individual court chooses to recast the

controversy, creating an unacceptable risk of arbitrary

and inconsistent constitutional outcomes. Fundamental

First Amendment protections cannot be administered

through an ad hoc process of judicial characterization.

Their scope must rest on a clear and uniform constitutional

rule, not on how a particular court elects to recast the

controversy.

II. This Court’s First Amendment Jurisprudence

Favors Clear Constitutional Boundaries Where

Ad Hoc Judicial Inquiry Threatens Fundamental

Protected Rights.

This Court’s First A mendment jurisprudence

recognizes the importance of clear constitutional

boundaries where case-by-case judicial evaluation would

itself threaten the protected right. Such boundaries serve

to restrain governmental intrusion into constitutionally

protected spheres, reduce the chilling effect created

by uncertain constitutional protection, and prevent

fundamental rights from turning on ad hoc judicial

characterization. Those concerns apply with particular

12

force to church autonomy, where the process of determining

whether an internal religious controversy is sufficiently

“secular” for civil adjudication may itself draw the court

into the religious institution’s governance, polity, and

allocation of authority.

The ministerial exception illustrates the point. In

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch.

v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171 (2012), this Court protected

the church’s authority to select its ministers from civil

interference, recognizing that “the authority to select and

control who will minister to the faithful—a matter ‘strictly

ecclesiastical’—is the church’s alone.” Id. at 194–95.

The constitutional protection attaches to the sphere

of decision making entrusted to the religious institution;

it does not depend upon a civil court’s assessment of

whether the institution’s reasons are sufficiently religious

to warrant protection. In Our Lady of Guadalupe Sch.,

the Court likewise rejected an approach that would reduce

the inquiry to “a checklist of items to be assessed and

weighed against each other.” 591 U.S. at 734. The reason

is particularly instructive here: “[d]eciding such questions

risks judicial entanglement in religious issues.” Id.

The same constitutional concern counsels against

allowing the scope of church autonomy to depend upon

a threshold judicial determination that an internal

governance controversy can be characterized as “secular.”

Put another way, this Court should identify the factors

that would render a controversy sufficiently religious and

require a court to abstain from resolving it.

13

Just as the ministerial exception protects a constitutionally reserved sphere from judicial intrusion, church

autonomy requires a discernible constitutional boundary

beyond which neutral principles cannot extend in the civil

courts. Otherwise, the protection itself becomes contingent

upon the very case-by-case judicial characterization

that risks intrusion into the religious sphere the First

Amendment protects.

This Court has rejected individualized inquiries in

other First Amendment contexts where constitutional

protection would otherwise depend upon a court’s caseby-case characterization of the protected activity. In

Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz., 576 U.S. 155 (2015), the

Court declined to make content neutrality depend upon

the government’s benign motive, emphasizing that “a

clear and firm rule governing content neutrality is an

essential means of protecting the freedom of speech,” even

where the challenged restriction might appear “entirely

reasonable.” Id. at 171.

The Court recognized that constitutional protection

cannot safely depend upon an individualized assessment

of governmental motive because “future government

officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress

disfavored speech.” Id. at 167. Likewise, in United States

v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010), the Court rejected an ad

hoc balancing test for determining whether particular

speech was sufficiently worthy of First Amendment

protection, describing the proposed approach as “startling

and dangerous” and “highly manipulable.” Id. at 470, 472.

The Court has expressed a related concern in the

Free Exercise context. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia,

14

593 U.S. 522 (2021), the Court held that a law permitting

government officials to grant individualized exemptions

was not generally applicable and therefore subject to strict

scrutiny. Id. at 544. The constitutional concern arose

from the government’s authority to make individualized

judgments about when otherwise applicable requirements

should yield.

These decisions reinforce the same structural concern

implicated in this case. Church autonomy should not

depend upon a civil court’s case-by-case assessment of

whether a particular aspect of a religious institution’s

internal governance is “sufficiently religious” to warrant

constitutional protection. Such an inquiry necessarily

places the civil court in the position of evaluating and

characterizing the religious significance of the institution’s

own governance, including its leadership, membership,

internal organization, procedures, and allocation of

authority. Those religious matters may be expressed

through required corporate governing documents that

are also intentionally and inherently imbued with secular

legal significance (such as articles of incorporation, bylaws,

committees, or deeds). As a result, the very same internal

religious controversy may be characterized by one court

as ecclesiastical and by another as merely corporate or

secular. Such was the case with the Tennessee Supreme

Court in Church of God in Christ, 531 S.W.3d at 149–50.

The First A mendment should not per mit the

constitutional boundary protecting church autonomy

to shift according to such individualized judicial

characterizations. Just as this Court has resisted

First Amendment standards that make constitutional

protection turn upon ad hoc assessments of motive,

value, or individualized governmental judgment, the

15

church-autonomy doctrine requires a sufficiently clear

constitutional boundary to prevent civil courts from

deciding whether an institution’s internal governance is

“religious enough” to remain beyond judicial resolution.

III. The Decision Below Disregards The Necessary And

Inherent Overlap Between Religious Governance

And The Civil Legal Forms Required To Effectuate

That Governance.

Religious institutions do not cease exercising religious

governance, adhering to religious doctrine, or acting

within the ecclesiastical structures of their faith merely

because they must complete and maintain the civil legal

forms required to operate within civil society. To the

contrary, there is an inherent overlap between religious

governance and the civil legal structures through which

religious institutions obtain legal recognition, hold

property, enter contracts, conduct financial affairs, and

otherwise function within civil society.

Articles of incorporation, bylaws, committees, officers,

and membership provisions serve simultaneously as

instruments of civil legal organization and expressions

of a religious institution’s internal governance. Indeed,

they are sufficiently religious that judicial intervention

is prohibited. The First Amendment protection afforded

that governance cannot depend on whether a court, on

an ad hoc basis, recasts the often-required language in

such forms as a basis for judicial review of a controversy

arising from that governance.

This case illustrates that inherent overlap and the

excessive entanglement that ensues. The NNSS’s bylaws

16

operate within the corporate governance requirements

of the laws of the State of Nevada while simultaneously

embodying the Society’s religious governance and

mandates. The NNSS’s bylaws define the Society’s

purpose as “preaching and professing of the Sikh religion.”

App. 19a. They condition membership on belief in Sikh

scripture, fidelity to the teachings of the Ten Gurus,

and understanding of the religion’s baptism ceremony.

Id. They likewise require members of the Management

Committee to possess “high knowledge of Gurbani and

Sikh history” and to “strictly abstain from alcohol/tobacco

and other drugs.” Id. at 26a. The Society’s religious

identity, membership, leadership, and governance thus

are not neatly divided between separate religious and

secular instruments. Rather, religious mandates and

civil corporate requirements necessarily coexist within

the same governing documents.

Yet, even against this backdrop, the constitutional

intrusion begins with the court’s initial threshold decision

to recast an internal religious governance controversy in

secular corporate terms. That act of recharacterization

itself enters the protected sphere of church autonomy by

requiring the court to determine which aspects of the

institution’s governance are sufficiently secular to permit

judicial review.

The Nevada Supreme Court then compounded that

intrusion by concluding that seemingly relevant provisions

were “secular governing corporate documents.” App. 14a.

In doing so, the court carved out provisions concerning

committees, membership, elections, and internal authority

from the religious governance structure of which they

form a part and recast the remaining controversy as one

susceptible to secular judicial resolution.

17

The problem is not cured by the infusion or presence

of terminology familiar to corporate law. Those provisions

exist alongside and operate within bylaws that expressly

prescribe religious qualifications for membership and

leadership and define the Society itself by incorporating

its religious mission. The Nevada Supreme Court’s

characterization disregards the inherent dual function

such documents necessarily perform.

Elections, committees, membership rolls, and

allocations of authority may be familiar features of

secular corporations, but their inclusion in the governing

documents of a religious institution does not render

the governance they implement secular. Civil legal

terminology does not transform religious governance into

secular corporate governance. Nor should constitutional

protection depend upon whether a religious institution

accompanies each provision concerning leadership,

membership, or institutional authority with an express

theological explanation.

Religious institutions must use civil legal forms to

function and administer temporal property within the

State. They are required by civil law to establish legal

identities, hold and transfer property, open bank accounts,

employ personnel, enter contracts, and comply with

applicable corporate and nonprofit requirements. Their

governing documents are therefore necessarily written,

at least in part, in the language required by civil law while

also embodying the church’s religious structure, mission,

and allocation of internal authority.

That overlap is inherent; it is not incidental. The same

provision may carry consequences under state corporate

18

law while simultaneously implementing the religious

institution’s internal governance. The existence of the

former does not diminish the constitutional significance

of the latter.

This Court has recognized the danger of allowing

civil legal form to obscure religious substance. As

Justice Thomas recently observed, “the corporation is

made for the church, not the church for the corporation.”

Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wis. Labor & Indus.

Review Comm’n, 605 U.S. 238, 263 (2025) (Thomas, J.,

concurring). The constitutional inquiry therefore cannot

end merely because a religious institution has embodied

aspects of its governance in documents and structures

recognized or required by civil law.

Otherwise, the very civil legal forms a religious

institution must maintain to function within a State

become how its internal governance is opened to civil

judicial review. Carried to its logical conclusion, that

approach leaves no meaningful limit. Virtually any

ecclesiastical decision memorialized in bylaws, policies,

corporate resolutions, financial instruments, or other

legally cognizable documents could be recast as a secular

controversy, reducing church autonomy from a substantive

First Amendment protection to an exception dependent

upon judicial characterization.

The experience of ADOLV further illustrates why

the line between religious governance and civil legal

form cannot be drawn simply by labeling matters

involving property, finances, or corporate administration

“secular.” Catholic canon law expressly recognizes the

administration of the Church’s “temporal goods,” including

19

property and other material resources necessary to carry

out the Church’s mission. The fact that such matters have

temporal and civil legal consequences does not remove

them from the Church’s religious governance. To the

contrary, their administration may itself be governed

by canon law, hierarchical authority, and ecclesiastical

obligations while simultaneously implicating state laws

governing corporations, property, contracts, and finance.

The same subject matter may therefore occupy both

spheres at once and would be afforded protection from

judicial review under the First Amendment.

T he decision below present s a fou ndat iona l

constitutional issue far more significant than one of

drafting style. If church autonomy depends upon whether

a court regards a particular governance provision as

“sufficiently religious” rather than “corporate,” religious

institutions are left without a stable constitutional

boundary. One court may regard provisions concerning

membership, leadership, committees, or institutional

authority as manifestations of religious governance.

Another court may characterize the same provisions

as ordinary corporate matters because they employ

terminology familiar to secular law. First Amendment

protections would then turn on a court’s characterization of

the civil form in which religious governance is expressed,

rather than the nature of the authority being exercised.

The First Amendment should not require such an inquiry.

Religious institutions should not have to demonstrate that

their governing documents are “sufficiently religious” to

preserve constitutional protection over matters of internal

governance. Nor should compliance with the civil legal

forms required to operate within a State provide an

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open gateway for judicial resolution of matters otherwise

committed to religious authority. A clear constitutional

boundary must recognize the inherent overlap between

religious governance and required civil legal forms while

preserving the autonomy the First Amendment protects.

IV. Permitting The Decision To Stand Jeopardizes First

Amendment Protections By Allowing Regional

Legal Traditions, Cultural Context, And Ad Hoc

Judicial Characterization To Displace A Uniform

Constitutional Standard.

Absent a uniform constitutional boundary, the

application of the First A mendment w ill remain

inconsistent given regional judicial understandings of

what constitutes religious governance. That risk may be

enhanced for lesser-known faiths whose forms of polity,

leadership, and religious authority may be less familiar

to courts. The First Amendment cannot permit the scope

of church autonomy to depend upon whether a religious

institution’s structure resembles forms of religious

governance more readily recognized within a particular

jurisdiction.

This concern is highlighted by this case. The NNSS

bylaws condition membership on belief in Sikh scripture

and the teachings of the Ten Gurus and require members

of its Management Committee to possess “high knowledge

of Gurbani and Sikh history” and satisfy other religious

requirements. App. 19a, 26a. Nonetheless, the Nevada

Supreme Court concluded that the challenged matters

could be resolved through “secular governing corporate

documents.” App. 14a.

21

ADOLV submits this brief because that principle

transcends any particular faith. Church autonomy belongs

equally to all religious institutions. A clear constitutional

boundary protecting internal religious governance would

ensure that the First Amendment does not provide one

measure of autonomy to familiar religious structures and

another to those less readily understood by a particular

court in a particular region. The Constitution requires a

national protection of religious autonomy, not one whose

scope changes with jurisdiction or judicial familiarity.

This Court should therefore grant certiorari to

clarify the constitutional boundary between permissible

application of neutral principles and impermissible

judicial intrusion into internal religious governance.

Such guidance would preserve the First Amendment’s

protection equally for all faith traditions while avoiding

the individualized judicial characterizations that have

produced the uncertainty demonstrated by the decision

below.

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CONCLUSION

The Court should grant the petition for a writ of

certiorari.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Simon-Kohl

The Roman Catholic

A rchbishop of Las Vegas

and His Successors,

a corporation sole

336 Cathedral Way

Las Vegas, NV 89109

Michael A. Heidler

Counsel of Record

Vinson & Elkins LLP

200 W. 6th Street, Suite 2500

Austin, TX 78701

(512) 542-8400

mheidler@velaw.com

Justin W. A imonetti

David S. Carter

Vinson & Elkins LLP

2001 Ross Avenue, Suite 3900

Dallas, TX 75201

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

September 2, 2026